The Ministry of Justice hosted a round table on improving case management in the public prosecution with particular emphasis on complexity of cases as criteria for case assignment. The round table was held on 28 September in Belgrade, with participation of the officials of the Ministry of Justice, members of the State Prosecutorial Council, public prosecutors of all levels, members of the High Judicial Council, representatives of professional associations and international organisations. The meeting was organised within the framework of the joint European Union-Council of Europe action “Strengthening independence and accountability of the judiciary”.

The key topic discussed at the round table was the improvement of the distribution of cases in public prosecutor's offices, by introduction of automatic random allocation of cases, which will take into account case complexity. This will ensure that cases are evenly circulated between deputy public prosecutors thereby guaranteeing even distribution of workload, increasing efficiency and improving insight into allocation of resources so that budgetary requirements can be better reasoned, while work results and performance evaluation can be carried through more accurately.

The meeting was opened by Tobias Flessenkemper, Head of the Council of Europe Office in Belgrade, Dirk Lorenz, Head of the Political Section at the Delegation of the EU to the Republic of Serbia and Livija Pavićević, State Secretary at the Ministry of Justice. Flessenkemper and Lorenz emphasised the importance of continuous commitment of Serbia to improvement of the state of human rights, democracy, and rule of law for benefit of its own citizens. They stressed that the rule of law is at the core of EU accession process and underlined the importance of automated case management in the public prosecution with the aim to improve the overall efficiency and accountability of holders of prosecutorial office. Pavićević confirmed that Serbia is fully committed to fulfilment of activities envisaged in the Chapter 23 Action Plan.

The round table featured a presentation of the comparative analysis on case weighting in several European jurisdictions by Stephanos Kareklas and Maria Mousmouti from the Centre for European Constitutional Law, followed by a lively discussion with input from all relevant institutions. The Ministry of Justice committed to amending the regulatory framework in order to develop and implement the case weighting formula in all public prosecutor’s offices.

This action “Strengthening independence and accountability of the judiciary” is part of the “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey II”, joint European Union and the Council of Europe programme, which aims at assisting beneficiaries in the Western Balkans region and Turkey to comply with the Council of Europe standards and European Union acquis in the framework of the enlargement process, where relevant.