Georgian Judiciary discusses a Draft Concept on Electronic Case Assignment System
On September 8, 2015 the Council of Europe (CoE) and the Supreme Court of Georgia organised a roundtable meeting on electronic case assignment system at the premises of the Supreme Court of Georgia. The CoE experts, members of the High Council of Justice of Georgia, judges from the first instance, appellate and cassation courts, and representatives of national and international organisations actively contributed to the information exchange throughout the discussion.
The Chairwoman of the Supreme Court, Ms Nino Gvenetadze, addressed the participants in her welcome speech. She thanked CoE for providing its expertise on the issue discussed and expressed hope that planned amendments would eventually lead to an enhanced level of efficiency and transparency in the Courts of General Jurisdiction.
In his introductory remarks, the Head of the Council of Europe Office in Georgia, Cristian Urse, referred to the Committee of Ministers’ Recommendation of 17 November 2010, which calls upon state parties to adopt objective, pre-established criteria on case allocation. Mr Urse confirmed CoE’s readiness to further assist the Georgian judiciary in enhancing its standards through the CoE Project “Strengthening the Independence and Efficiency of the Justice System in Georgia”.
Georgian judiciary had approached the Council of Europe with a request to provide its expertise and assess the draft concept on electronic case allocation system that envisions transforming the existing alphabetical distribution of cases into a random case assignment system. To this end, two CoE experts, Mr Pavel Reberc (Slovenia) and Mr Razvan Craciunescu (Romania) attended the meeting in order to assess the state of play and suggest further recommendations.
CoE is to present its assessment of the draft concept on electronic case assignment system by the end of September, after which the draft concept is expected to be updated.
The meeting is organised in the framework of the Council of Europe Project “Strengthening the Independence and Efficiency of the Justice System in Georgia” funded by the Kingdom of Denmark.
