A new website, otvorenésúdy.sk, was created to provide the Slovak public with information on the quality of judicial rulings and the length of cases, Transparency International Slovensko (TIS) informed. From Tuesday, July 23 on, citizens can follow detailed information on rulings, trials, property returns and sanctions for more than 1,700 Slovak judges through the website.
Gabriel Šípoš, head of TIS, told the TASR newswire that the time has come to cast more light on the work of judges. Slovakia is one of 20 countries in which the judiciary is generally considered to be more corrupt than political parties or parliament. “We know from polls that every 11th household gave a bribe in the courts last year, and 67 percent of inhabitants do not trust them,” he stated in a press release. “An untrustworthy judiciary influences not just the business environment, but also the quality of life,” Šípoš said, adding that it is necessary to have a wider debate, based on actual data, on the quality of the judiciary.
Otvorenésúdy.sk aims to facilitate such a debate by providing improved accessibility and processing of judicial information. Every court and every judge has its own profile, which includes basic data on their activities, the number of rulings, the proportion of unsolved cases, the share of protracted cases and the percentage of decisions that are later confirmed by a higher-instance court. The website also processes data from judges’ property statements. One of the project’s coordinators, Matej Kurian of TIS, expressed hope that the website and its data will result in a more open public debate. The site also makes public more than half a million court rulings.
Otvorenésúdy is a joint project by TIS and students Samuel Molnár and Pavol Zbell, winners of the Reštart Slovensko competition organised by the Centre for Philanthropy.
(Source: TIS, TASR)
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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