After a meeting with the presidents of all county and high courts, Supreme Court president Radovan Dobronic on Wednesday issued an order that describes in more detail jobs that can be identified as the most urgent and those that will most likely have to be performed during the ongoing strike in the judiciary.

The Supreme Court issued the order on the most urgent tasks, which Dobronic upheld so as to elaborate in more detail an order issued on 9 June.

All court presidents are ordered to organize the work of the courts in such a way that the court registry must receive and register all incoming mail and files and deliver them to other offices.

Mandatory dispatch of urgent mail as well as those in which a verdict was handed down despite the strike was ordered, and the received mail and files must be delivered to the judges who will then be able to determine in which cases action is urgent and necessary.

According to the order issued by Supreme Court president, heads of offices are obliged to appoint clerks in such a way that during the strike, at least one clerk is always on duty.

Dobronic specified that the performance of urgent work refers to files in which the defendant is in pretrial detention (investigative hearing, hearing, panel of judges sessions, writing and sending verdicts, issuing permits and certificates for visits), all on-call duties in investigations, procedures in which the defendants are minors or the victims are children and minors, as well as proceedings in which the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution is threatened and proceedings in cases that fall under the jurisdiction of the Act on the Execution of Prison Sentences.

Civil departments of the courts were ordered to perform urgent tasks related to the treatment of persons under the Act on the Protection of Persons with Mental Disabilities and in cases from the Family Act related to measures for the protection of personal rights and the welfare of children.

In addition, the civil departments were ordered to carry out urgent work in cases in which a proposal for the issuance of a temporary measure was submitted, without which the life, health or personal safety of the parties involved would be endangered or irreparable damage of a larger scale would occur.

The goal of the order is for courts to align the protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms on the one hand and court clerks’ right to strike on the other.