16 September, 2016

On Tuesday, September 13, Dace Sulmane, Adviser to the Council for the Judiciary of the Division of Case-law and Research of the Supreme Court participated in the international conference "Law in Central and Eastern Europe", which took place in Lithuania in the Mykolas Romeris University. During the conference current events of the region and developments in legislation as a whole was viewed. The representative from Latvia gave a presentation "Access to Justice and Judicial Efficiency. Recent Developments in Latvia".

Dace Sulmane also visited the Court Administration of Lithuania to get acquainted with latest information on the principles of allocation of cases in Lithuanian courts, as well as workload balancing tools. EU Justice Scoreboard indicators were discussed, as well as composition of committee of judicial ethics and disciplinary proceedings, latest performance and its results.

Court Administration of Lithuania provided valuable statistics and practical information on judicial workload in the country, as well as gave examples of case-law in order to illustrate the topical issues. For example, administrative courts in the last couple of years have been overloaded with massive requirements of officials on reduction of salaries during the crisis. In 2015 there were 4,000 entries in this case and this summer amendments to the Procedure Laws were made to be able to combine these cases.

Dace Sulmane pointed out that experience and information gained during the Conference and by visiting the Court Administration of Lithuania would be useful for future work of the Council for the Judiciary, as well as such experience developed contacts with colleagues in Lithuania.

 

Information prepared by

Rasma Zvejniece, the Head of the Division of Communication of the Supreme Court

E-mail: rasma.zvejniece@at.gov.lv, telephone: +371 67020396, +371 28652211