Croatian judges must serve citizens, says Europe minister

By David Cronin

Date: 20/055/04

A 'CULTURE change' is needed among Croatia's judiciary in preparation for EU membership, the country's Europe minister has acknowledged.

Zagreb's hopes of being given the green light to start accession talks at the June EU summit were given a boost when the European Commission published a positive assessment of the ex-Yugoslav state last month. Yet among the shortcomings identified by the report was how the Croatian courts face a backlog of 1.3 million civil cases (an enormous volume for a country with 4.5 million inhabitants) and that judges are required to perform tasks which should be handled by clerical staff.

Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, minister of European integration in Ivo Sanader's government, said that meeting the conditions of EU membership did not just mean implementing the Union's body of law.

"We need to change attitudes as well," she told European Voice. "This has to do with the legacies of a centrally-planned socialist system. We have to modernize. Judges have to appreciate that they're there to serve citizens. There has to be individual responsibility for what they do."

In order to remedy the flaws in the legal system, Zagreb is encouraging that inheritance and other cases, where there is no dispute between the parties, are settled out of court. Court counsellors are also being appointed, particularly to ease the burdens of those courts with the highest numbers of pending cases. And a judicial academy is due to be operating at full swing next year, as part of efforts to improve the training of judges.

Grabar-Kitarovic is a member of the Croatian Democratic Union, the party of late president Franjo Tudjman, who led a vicious onslaught on Croatia's 600,000 Serb minority in the 1990s. Yet Sanader has undertaken steps towards reconciliation with the Serb Orthodox population and cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. However, one of the Croat generals on its 'most wanted' list, Ante Gotovina, remains at large.

Croatian intelligence services say Gotovina, a French-Croatian citizen, is not on national territory but have not divulged where they believe he is. "We are cooperating with the international community in trying to find out where he is," the minister claimed.

She also pointed out that the recent extradition of two other generals indicted for war crimes to The Hague shows "Croatia's readiness to cooperate fully".

However, Croatia remains in dispute over several issues with new EU state Slovenia. The disagreements relate to control of the Krsko nuclear power station, the bank Ljubljanska Banka, border demarcation and Croatia's decision to designate a fishing and ecological protection zone in the Adriatic.

Grabar-Kitarovic said she would be in favour of international arbitration to settle the border row. But she conceded that others would have to go to court. This is the case with the contentious bank, as some 100 Croatian depositors have taken their grievances to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Report of comments from Croatia's Minister for European Integration, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic.