News

On March 31, the Secretary of the Judicial Council, Ramūnas Gadliauskas, who presented the 2022 report on the activities of the Lithuanian courts to the public, paid a lot of attention to asylum cases, the problem of the reduced number of judges and the financing of the courts.

Last year, the courts examined more than 191 thousand cases in which fundamental values of society and justice are defended, commercial, civil, family disagreements or disputes between the state and its citizens are resolved.

The year was exceptional due to the illegal migration crisis in the country - the number of asylum cases in the courts increased almost sixfold. According to the secretary of the Judicial Council, R. Gadliauskas, the drastic increase in such cases made it necessary to take urgent measures. For example, 5 judges of the Supreme Court of Lithuania and the Court of Appeal of Lithuania were transferred to the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania for 3 months, whose activities helped shorten the duration of administrative cases even to 120 days.

Last year, the Lithuanian judicial community was faced with aggravated problems in the formation of the corps of judges and court employees. Compared to recent years, 2022 ended with a record low number of judges at just 705, with a shortage of over 100 assistant judges and other staff in the courts.

Despite the difficult situation, the self-government of the courts consistently sought ways to ensure equal workloads in district courts.

Following the change in the order of distribution of cases in July of last year, the workload indicators of district courts with a lower workload increased in 2022, while those with a higher workload decreased.

"Extremely much attention was paid to the creation of the long-term development vision of the Lithuanian judicial system - a survey was conducted, we discussed with the community and institutional partners. At the end of last year, the vision of the development of Lithuanian courts for the years 2023-2033 was approved. We hope that this document will help to systematically address areas of the system to be improved and will become a guide in the work of every member of the judicial community," said R. Gadliauskas, secretary of the Judicial Council, during the presentation.

The presented report also contains a lot of information about the professional development of people in the judicial system, about how and to what extent the work of the courts was visible in the public space, what was the quality of the services provided by the courts, how much attention was paid to the protection of personal data, how the activities of the courts were financed and the administration of the improvement of the activities of the courts projects.

Short version of the report in English can be found HERE