"League table" of slowest courts of little value, says judges' leader

The Czech Republic's court system has a reputation for being incredibly slow, with some cases taking years to reach a conclusion. Earlier this week a journalist released a league table ranking Czech courts according to how quickly they resolve cases. The court in Svitavy topped the chart, while the Teplice district court was judged the slowest in the country. But in reality how useful can such a table be? That's a question I put to Jan Vyklicky, the head of the Czech judges' union.

"League table" of slowest courts of little value, says judges' leader

Jan Vyklicky

"It's a way how to open the problem of justice and to start the process of mutual discussion between the judiciary and the general public. But of course in specific meaning this list doesn't have any value, because it uses some numbers but of course we can offer other numbers, as the president of the court in Chomutov said yesterday."

I read an interview with the head of the court in Teplice, which came at the bottom of the list in this league table of courts. The head of the court said that their problem is a lack of judges and that they as individual judges are working hard - is it a common problem in this country that courts don't have enough judges?

"No, it's not a common problem, it's a problem in some regions, like north Bohemia or north Moravia and in some specific regions of the Czech Republic. But I think a more serious problem than the lack of judges is the lack of qualified administrative staff for judges, which is another thing."

Would you say the courts in the Czech Republic were working more quickly now than they were, say, five or ten years ago?

"If you're asking me about the speed of the work of judges, they work much more and they decide more cases, if you ask me about the speed of the work of courts, it's something different. It depends."

Sometimes you see on TV cases which have been going on for ten years. Can you understand that the public can be frustrated by the slow pace at which court cases are resolved?

"How many cases take such a long time, seven, eight or more years? I'm sure that it's a few hundred cases."

There have been a few cases, I think very few, of Czechs winning judgements at the European Court of Human Rights because their cases have taken ten or even more years (in the Czech courts).

"You expressed exactly the truth, there are few cases like that. I'm glad that we have these cases because we need to be cultivated also, not only by our idea about these cases but also by some idea coming from abroad."