Belarusian judicial system reform to stay on budget

– The reformation of the judicial system should not inflate personnel numbers or entail additional spending on the part of the state budget. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko made the statement at the government session held on 19 November to discuss the improvement of the operation of courts and judicial bodies, BelTA has learned.

The head of state said it was necessary to cut down on paperwork in the court system. “We should come up with a way to significantly reduce the number of support personnel. We have few judges as it is. If we consider paperwork, paperwork that has gone overboard, then courts are likely to be top of the list. We have to streamline various kinds of procedures, all this paperwork,” noted the President.

Alexander Lukashenko said that the purpose of the session was to improve the court system. In his words, participants of the session will have to discuss issues that have matured and that had been discussed more than once.

“We have come up with decisive solutions to improve some aspects of our overall legal system,” stressed the President. “I mean the decision to set up the Investigation Committee as an independent body. Nobody has said, at least since then, that we did the wrong thing. Everyone supports the decision and I get reports that the law enforcement system performs better on the whole. Today we will have to attempt to make a decision to improve the court system”.

According to the head of state, courts are an official authority. “It is written in the Constitution. It is not some kind of innovation but the internationally accepted practice of democratic states. Therefore any changes and optimizations of the courts operation has to be balanced and thought-out,” the President is convinced. “We have to take into account the accumulated experience, the modern state of the domestic judicial system, and global trends in this area”.

Alexander Lukashenko remarked that the performance of Belarusian courts had been noticeably improved thanks to the introduction of a number of innovations. In particular, the average monthly workload of judges has been reduced, new forms and methods of work have been introduced to improve the quality, response time and the accessibility of justice.

Yet some problems linger on, the President said. Those include the lack of a uniform approach in the application of the substantial law by general and economic courts. There some difficulties involved in determining the court jurisdiction of individual disputes. The multiple processes involved in administering justice make the operation of courts complicated.

Alexander Lukashenko remarked that general and economic courts have been distanced from each other lately. The change has complicated judicial defense and access of individuals and corporations to justice even more. In some cases general courts and economic ones pronounced different verdicts, which is unacceptable.

“Therefore, today we have to make optimal decisions on topical matters concerning the improvement of the operation of courts for the sake of the state and the society,” said the President.