Ten Rule of Law NGOs presented a report setting out an appraisal of the state-of-play of judicial reform and the necessary further steps to be taken to the European Commission. Its purpose is to substitute the monitoring on the judiciary until the end of the year. Independence of the judiciary and ensuring efficient justice are viewed as the two key aspects of future reforms.
The summary stresses on the ineffectiveness of the reforms undertaken so far, described as “merely a faint-hearted attempt to address existing structural problems through superfluous measures”. It names many of the problems within the judiciary, which the previous Supreme Judicial Council didn’t manage to resolve, as pointed in the summary five-year report of the European Commission dated 18 July 2012.
Despite the continuous efforts of NGOs to engage as representatives of society in the events of SJC members and other judiciary high-post officials, proposing changes to address the problematic issues, no support has been shown by the respective authorities. Thus, NGOs interpret such inactivity as lack of will to reform and resolve those problems.
The main areas of reforms, pointed out, are the model underlying the SJC, the underlying model of courts, the status of judges, the underlying model of the Prosecution Service and the need for applying systematic and consistent anti-corruption measures.