Slovakia has undertaken a comprehensive reform of its court system. Peterka & Partners Partner Andrea Butasova and Ruzicka & Partners Partner Sarlota Stosova explore the ambitious restructuring and its consequences, the challenges encountered during its implementation, and its far-reaching implications for legal professionals and the justice system of Slovakia.
Main Updates
The restructuring of courts in Slovakia represents “a significant change to the Slovak court system, which was adopted with an aim to aid specialization and thus speed up court proceedings as the lengths of cases have been viewed negatively by the general public,” Butasova begins.
As she reports, the reform has brought many changes, among the most important of which are the “establishment of Municipal Courts in Bratislava and Kosice by merging previous district courts to newly established municipal courts; the reduction in the number of district courts, down from a previous number of 54 to 36; and the establishment of administrative courts of the first instance.” Now, an administrative action can only be brought before “one of the three administrative courts with seats in Banska Bystrica, Bratislava, and Kosice, as opposed to the previous system, where there were eight first-instance administrative courts,” Butasova explains.
“In the case of the Bratislava municipal courts, the creation of agenda municipal courts has taken place – each of the four municipal courts has a different agenda, e.g., Municipal Court I has a criminal law agenda,” Stosova adds. “The courts introduced the specialization of judges in civil, family, criminal law, and commercial law. In addition, the commercial law agenda is concentrated exclusively in the district courts in the region’s seat.” Furthermore, she reports that “the number of regional courts remains unchanged, including their seats – the specialized civil and criminal law agenda remains in all of them. Another novelty is the introduction of causal jurisdiction for appeals in commercial and family law cases only to the three appellate (regional) courts.”
Aiming for Efficiency
According to the Slovak government, Butasova reports, the “aim of the reform of the judicial map was to improve the judiciary’s credibility, performance, and quality, while ensuring better working and decision-making conditions for judges and court staff. The reorganization is aimed at achieving an efficient judiciary, as it was supposed to create appropriate conditions for the specialization of judges, both at the level of district courts and at the level of regional courts.”
“In the view of the authors of this bill, often fragmented and small courts were less efficient and less resilient to local ties while limiting the possibility of specialization of judges, which is one of the prerequisites for an efficient judiciary,” Stosova chimes in. “One of the fundamental objectives of the new court map was precisely the specialization of courts and judges, especially for criminal, civil, family, and commercial matters in general courts and for administrative matters in the separate administrative judiciary.”
Encountering Challenges
Though the government declared that one of the aims of the judicial reform is to speed up proceedings, the “reality we have seen thus far is a bit different, especially in the Slovak capital, where the changes to the court structure had the most impact,” according to Butasova. “Namely, as the agenda of individual courts was changed in the declared interest of aiding specialization,” she adds, explaining that this was accompanied by the extensive moving of files, judges, and clerical staff, which, in her view, “disrupted the usual effectiveness of the given court departments. In some cases, the judges chose – or were assigned – to new locations away from the staff they were used to working with, and this also negatively affected the departments, at least for the time being.”
Additionally, Stosova says that the reorganization resulted in the transfer of files from the original courts to the successor courts, as well as in a change in the original case file marking. “This has caused many hearings to be canceled while the file was transferred to the new successor courts, and, in turn, the new successor courts had to take a period of time to physically process or enter these new proceedings into their systems, which had a significant negative impact on the length of many of the proceedings,” she explains.
“With the creation of a new administrative law court system, the Ministry of Justice has repeatedly published calls to fill vacant positions for administrative judges,” Butasova reports. “Continuous efforts are being carried out to hire competent administrative support for judges, as there is a general shortage of clerical staff in Slovak courts connected with the high fluctuation of the workforce.”
However, even here, there are issues. “Since the enactment of the laws regulating the change of court seats and judicial districts in the National Council of the Slovak Republic, only a six-month postponement of the effectiveness of most of the planned changes was adopted at the end of 2022 because, as stated by the then Minister of Justice, the courts were not yet ready for it,” Stosova says, adding that “due to the relatively short time since the entry into force of these changes, it is difficult to say objectively what impact this amendment has had and what further steps are needed to increase the efficiency of the judicial system.”
Consequences for Legal Professionals
As for the impact that these changes might have specifically on legal professionals, Butasova reports that the “specialization should bring better quality decisions, and the predictability of court decisions is expected to increase as well. This may indirectly mean fewer appeals being filed in the future.”
“For lawyers, the change of the court map has brought several changes – as a simple example, the place of filing lawsuits has changed as a number of courts have been abolished and their districts have been incorporated into other courts,” Stosova adds. According to her, the most significant changes occurred in the case of commercial disputes, which, “if not finally decided on by the end of May 2023, were automatically transferred under the new rules on causal jurisdiction to the new successor courts in the seats of the regional courts, which may have resulted in a significant increase in the duration of the disputes.”
Stosova concludes by adding that the reorganization bill itself was “drafted by the Ministry of Justice without much discussion with practitioners, and thus the court map does not in any way address several problems of the Slovak justice system.”
This article was originally published in Issue 11.3 of the CEE Legal Matters Magazine. If you would like to receive a hard copy of the magazine, you can subscribe here.
