In his address to the Administrative Court, the Minister of Justice, Igor Filkov, pointed out that the introduction of audio and video recording began in 2010, with the Law on Civil Procedure and the Law on Criminal Procedure.
"Today, after a period of more than 10 years, we can unfortunately state that the courts only partially used the sound recording during the proceedings and failed to implement the legal decisions fully and consistently, neither in the civil nor in the criminal procedure, and evidently from today's event not even in the administrative procedure. Unfortunately, numerous examples of destroyed audio recording equipment have also been established. Everything that happened before is only a small part to explain what is due to the perception and trust of the citizens in the judiciary of only 2%", said Filkov.
The Minister said that the citizens are the ones who are most affected in the administrative procedure.
"The sound recording equipment in the Administrative Court is being installed today. Let's not waste another 14 years and wait for judgments from the ECHR that will order us to apply the standards for a fair trial. I encourage you to aim and invest in modern judiciary and to contribute to it all together. My vocal fight for the independence of the judiciary will be by securing the percentage for an independent judicial budget. But I also encourage you, each of you, in every case, to succeed in using the sound recording and every other tool to enable the standards of fair and just trial. And finally, this is just a small contribution, I would say, symbolic, in starting the reforms that depend and must start from ourselves. Considering that there is no longer an excuse for the non-existence of sound recording technology, with the fact that all courts are equipped, I am convinced that in the next 15 days the system will be applied everywhere", stated Filkov.
