Partner: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung –Rule of Law Program South East Europe

The idea of the project emerged from two observations. On the one hand, in the past 20 years, strategic foresight with regard to the justice system did not go beyond the short-term or certainly not beyond a medium term horizon. On the other hand, after the accession to the EU, various strategic documents regarding reform of the justice system were being circulated by various institutions and authorities involved in the operation of the system, but no consensus had been reached.

Therefore, starting from an inventory of the current challenges and weaknesses, the project suggests an imagination drill by attempting to answer the following question: “How do we want our justice system to work in 2020?”

The project is geared by diversity – diversity regarding both the fields subject to analysis and the specialization of its authors. Thus we have approached fields such as: legislative and institutional instability, fighting corruption, recruiting, magistrates’ professional training and career, composition and operation of the Constitutional Court or of the Higher Council of Magistrates, current and future jurisdiction of the High Court of Review and Justice, efficiency of procedures, access to jurisprudence, and relations with the media. The analysis does not avoid controversial or present-day issues: Who should manage the budget of the justice sector? What should be the process of promotion to the High Court of Cassation and Justice? How can we ensure fair balance between independence and responsibility? How should the quality of a public service be measured? The perspective offered by this document is diverse, comparable to the various specialties of the experts who contributed to it: magistrates from different jurisdiction levels, lawyers, professors, representatives of the civil society or clerks of the European Court of Human Rights.

The main objective of the first stage of the project (2010) was to consolidate the reform process of the judicial system and to increase its sustainability by creating a long term strategy that will offer necessary incentives to a real institutional change. The first step to institutional change in judicial system is to elaborate a strategic document that meets specific recommendations for public policy. The necessary expertise to elaborate such a complex document was made by a work group comprised of top experts from the judicial field. This work group proposed the problem of short term perspective in elaborating politics through a long term perspective and proposing realistic solutions adjusted to the Romanian situation. The advanced approach creates connections among reform strategies applied to post-communist countries in South East Europe, trying to identify similarities and efficient solutions to common problems.

The research activity incorporated a public policy document providing directions to institutional construction in the judicial field, and it was presented and debated within an international conference in Bucharest. The second stage of the project (2011) was an institutional one, involving cooperation with institutions and authorities of the judicial system in order to implement some of the solutions and recommendations contained in the Review. Following consultations with representatives of the Higher Council of Magistrates, the High Court of Review and Justice and the Ministry of Justice, one of the selected topics was that of inconsistent jurisprudence. In this context, a working group was created, comprising, in addition to the experts who worked on the initial document, representatives of the Ministry of Justice, the Higher Council of Magistrates, the High Court of Review and Justice. The results of both working groups consisted of support documentation for the judicial system: “Proposals for changing the new code of civil procedure law”, “Principles of construction and execution of the Court Budget”. These were launched and disseminated during a final conference benefitting from participation of international speakers and experts in Court budget management.