No Justice Without Money – Lawyers Against New Code of Civil Procedure

Citizens’ access to courts will be made even more difficult, the lawsuits for which fees have not been paid will be dismissed and civil procedures will last even longer. Those who filed a lawsuit earlier, without paying the fee, will be treated as if they’ve given up on the lawsuit. All this, according to lawyer Jelena Pavlovic, will be the consequences of the implementation of the new, amended Code of Civil Procedure, the draft of which was published by the Ministry of Justice. Lawyers are therefore asking for this draft to be withdrawn from further procedure.

– The draft law envisages for the stipulations to apply to the ongoing lawsuits as well. Simply said, this means that, if someone has filed a lawsuit, complaint, response to a claim, without paying a fee, what has been filed will be considered withdrawn. And the fees in Serbia are already inappropriately high relative to our standard. This condition – to pay the fee in order to have access to the court – would therefore disable anyone except the very small stratum of the wealthy, from coming to the court – Jelena Pavlovic said.

This, she points out, pertains to any lawsuit.

– Each fee in the lawsuits I’ve taken part in related to the Swiss franc was RSD 97,500. In addition to the lawsuit, the same amount needs to be paid for a complaint and then for the second-instance decision – Pavlovic says and adds that fees range, on average, between 30,000 and 97,5000 dinars, which is the highest fee.

As she points out, this kind of a draft of a serious systemic law is impossible to work with, because it would lead to halfway solutions, so lawyers want it to be fully withdrawn from the procedure.

– We are in favor of the efficiency of courts, but these measures will increase the already overloaded system and paralyze the courts’ operations – Jelena Pavlovic pointed out.

Earlier that day, the Ministry of Justice announced that minister Maja Popovic had met with the president of the Lawyers’ Chamber of Serbia, Viktor Gostiljac, to discuss the dissatisfaction expressed over the draft, published on the website of the Ministry of Justice as part of the initiation of a public discussion.

Advokatska komora Srbije

Viktor Gostiljac

Maja Popović

Jelena Pavlović

law

lawsuit

court

money

fee