11 November, 2022
On Friday, November 11, the Judicial Council discussed the functionality of the electronic case management system (e-case) and instructed the Court Administration to submit an action plan to the Judicial Council for improving the operation of the e-case.
The Court Administration is required to submit the plan within a month and it must include the deadlines for resolving deficiencies in the operation of the e-case as identified by the presidents of the courts. The plan submitted by the Court Administration will be considered at the meeting of the Judicial Council.
Moreover, the members of the Judicial Council agreed on development of the amendments to the procedure for the selection of candidates for the position of district (city) court and district court judges and on the procedure for consideration of amendments.
The Judicial Council decided to convene the Judges’ Conference on May 19, 2023 and requested the judges to submit proposals for issues to be considered at the Conference.
Rihards Veinbergs, legal research counsel to the Secretariat of the Judicial Council, informed the members of the Judicial Council about the demographic situation in the Latvian judicial system, the current number of judges and their distribution by courts, as well as the number of vacancies. A total of 534 judges work in Latvia, of which 36 are already eligible for retirement, while 144 judges could retire within the next five years. Therefore, it can be concluded that Latvian judges are rapidly approaching retirement age. In the medium term, this may lead to a high number of vacancies and difficulties in filling judicial vacancies. Latvia also has the lowest proportion of male judges (19%) among all member states of the Council of Europe.