ZAGREB, 1 June 2022 - "The state has to withdraw 20% of its lawsuits because courts are overloaded with unnecessary litigations", Supreme Court Chief Justice Radovan Dobronić says in his first report to the parliament, the Jutarnji List daily reported on Wednesday.

If courts are to increase their timeliness, it is essential that there are not approximately one million new cases each year. The annual input of about one million cases in a country of barely four million is unnatural and reflects many and varied reasons of a systemic nature.

That is one of the key highlights of the annual report on the situation in the judiciary for 2021, which is Judge Dobronić's first report to the Sabor, made six months after he stepped into office. 

In the report, unlike his predecessors, Dobronić more openly discusses concrete problems in various areas of the judiciary and recommends concrete solutions.

"The timeliness and quality of work of the courts will not be achieved with amendments to the Civil Procedure Act or claims that judges aren't working hard enough", says Dobronić.

He recommends adopting a package of measures to improve working conditions for first instance judges who, according to him, are the leading element of the judiciary. He calls for changing what he describes as settled yet incorrect forms of judicial practice as well as for changing the conduct of stakeholders other than courts that generate thousands of unnecessary court cases every year.

"New cases can be prevented in different ways and one is for the state to restrict litigations between state-owned institutions and companies", he says.

Dobronić blames that situation on incompetent and irresponsible management boards of state-owned companies and institutions. The large number of litigations between individual companies, institutions, agencies and institutes owned by the state simply cannot be justified, he says in the report.

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