The court coaching programme for implementation of CEPEJ tools was launched in the pilot courts of the Republic of Azerbaijan

In the framework of the PCF Project “Support to Increased Efficiency of Courts, Improved Training of Judges and Judicial Self-governance in Azerbaijan”, funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe, a team of CEPEJ experts visited Azerbaijan on 19-23 October 2015. After an initial fact-finding mission in July 2015, the experts visited for the second time the five CEPEJ pilot courts of Azerbaijan, namely the Sheki Appellate Court, the Sumgait Appellate Court, the Baku City Yasamal District Court, the Oghuz District Court and the Sumgait City Administrative-Economic Court.

All five pilot courts had provided to the CEPEJ team, in advance to the mission, comprehensive statistical data for the years 2010-2014. The court coaching programme for implementation of the SATURN Guidelines for judicial time management was initiated through an analysis of courts’ statistics in line with the CEPEJ recommendations. In each pilot court the CEPEJ experts presented the methodology and the results of calculating the most important efficiency indicators (clearance rate, disposition time, case per judge etc.), outlined the overall good quality of the provided data and discussed further with the pilot courts the implementation of the judicial time management guidelines and the selected criteria for promoting the quality of justice as a public service.

As a next step, the CEPEJ experts will draw up and put forward for discussions with the pilot courts individual court coaching reports, which will outline the main findings and recommendations for a better implementation of the CEPEJ tools in each of the pilot courts. After having approved the court coaching reports, the pilot courts will proceed to their implementation in the course of 2016, with the support from the PCF Project.