Zlata Djurdjevic, a candidate for the Supreme Court president, said on Tuesday that "corporatism - defined as a closed professional group with privileges without any external oversight - was the main problem of the Croatian judiciary," state agency Hina reported.

“It is important to achieve a balance between judicial autonomy and judicial responsibility for the sake of avoiding corporatism. That is not talked about in Croatia, and when someone speaks up about it, it is considered a taboo and an insult even though both GRECO and the Venice Commission have pointed to the problem of corporatism,” Djurdjevic said at a panel discussion entitled “Judiciary and public: Ensuring responsible and transparent administration of justice”.

Djurdjevic believes that the main cause of judicial corporatism is the fact that two-thirds of the State Judicial Council (DSV) members are judges, and that in appointing judges, external excellence criteria are disregarded while what is taken into account are the test and the job interview but not one’s performance as an undergraduate, which is why other institutions have no influence on whether a judge is sufficiently competent.

State responsible for judges’ work

“There is no public discussion about the candidates, voting is secret but the DSV president knows how DSV members have voted,” she said, stressing that judges are government employees and the state is responsible for their work, materially and before international courts, since the government represents the state before the European Court of Human Rights.

Principle of publicity one of most important

The head of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (HAZU) Council for State Administration, Judiciary and Rule of Law, Jaksa Barbic, stressed that the principle of publicity was one of the most important guarantees that judges and courts acted in line with their social role and functions.

“Trials must be public. It is not enough to administer justice, it is also important that everyone is aware and knows that it is administered, which is why all rulings should be made public and easily searchable,” he said.

He noted that the actual state of court efficiency was determined, among other things, based on the number of accepted court rulings and that one should not base their opinion about the judiciary on cases that cause public disapproval.

Speakers at the panel and participants in the subsequent discussion were agreed that there is a tendency on the part of the judiciary to close itself off from the public and treat negatively any public criticism of the judiciary. It was also stressed that judicial officials brand criticism as populism, dismissing even well-intentioned warnings about rulings that are legally and socially deeply unacceptable.

This results, it was said, in antagonism between the judiciary and the public and a very low level of public trust in and respect for the judiciary.