One of main priorities of the Council of Europe is to strengthen the case law departments within the highest instance courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina to achieve greater consistency of judicial practice in the country.

The public availability of judicial decisions is an important element of the open justice and helps foster transparency of the judicial process while ensuring the need for public scrutiny in a democratic society.

However, the online publication of court decisions requires balancing of some rights: right to personal data protection and the right to access judicial decisions. Therefore, the Council of Europe organised, from 6-7 March 2023, a training on ECtHR standards on Data Protection and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for twelve legal advisors of the case law departments of the highest courts and the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council.

The training tackled questions, like: who is responsible for the anonymisation and publication? Whether they fall within the judicial responsibility and thus is excluded from the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)? What are the standards and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights? What safeguards shall be provided to protect individuals’ private life, right to be forgotten and rehabilitation in criminal cases?

The activity is organised within the project: "Initiative for Legal Certainty and Efficient Judiciary in Bosnia and Herzegovina – Phase III".