N8.T5 – Thirty Thousand Cases Pending in the Administrative Court of Montenegro!
HRA NEWSLETTER 8 – TOPIC 5
Fourteen judges of the Administrative Court of Montenegro are currently working on more than 30,000 cases. This was announced at the press conference presenting the report on the work of that Court for the year 2024 and the first quarter of 2025.
The data show that in the reporting period judges were in charge, on average, of approximately 2,500 cases each. Although the stipulated norm for the number of resolved cases per judge is 300, the judges of the Administrative Court have resolved twice as many, i.e. an average of about 740 cases.
This Court has not been functioning at full capacity for quite a long time now; according to data from May of this year, the Court has 14 of the planned 16 judges, with five advisers missing. On 28 January 2025, the Judicial Council selected a candidate for the position of judge of the Administrative Court, while a competition for the election of one judge of that court was announced on 13 May.
The President of the Administrative Court Miodrag Pešić recently said in an interview for the Standard portal that the number of judges in the Court was planned having in mind an annual inflow of approximately 5,000 cases. As he confirmed during the presentation of the report, it is precisely the number of cases that is the biggest challenge they are facing.
“In 2023, we had a record inflow of 17,000 cases. We have not had such a number of cases since the Administrative Court was established… The number of cases exceeds the number of judges. In such conditions, it can hardly be said that the court is functioning normally and that it can fulfil its role of resolving cases within a reasonable time”, said Pešić.
As stated, the Administrative Court of Montenegro was efficient in the first quarter of this year as well, resolving a greater number of cases than it received and thereby partially reducing the total backlog. Nevertheless, at the end of 2024, as many as 26,638 cases from earlier years remained unresolved (4,932 from 2022, 12,213 from 2023, and 9,493 from 2024).
The latest report of the specialised body of the Council of Europe – the European Commission for Judicial Efficiency (CEPEJ) – for the year 2022 showed that the situation in the Administrative Court of Montenegro is alarming. They pointed to the worrisome situation in that Court based on the fact that it has experienced the highest drop in promptness at the European level, of 89%, and that its proceedings lasted 739 days on average. Serbia is the only other country with a similarly bad situation.
English