"The Constitutional Court is overloaded with cases and only a few of them fall within its remit. As many as 95 per cent of the cases actually have no constitutional significance," Omejec said at a round table discussion on the future of the Constitutional Court held in the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Zagreb on Thursday.
She pushed for changes, but was against radical make-overs in the court's organisation.
Omejec said that only authorised bodies of the legislative and executive branches of authority should be allowed to ask the Constitutional Court to assess whether certain provisions are in accordance with the Constitution. On the other hand, constitutional complaints could be submitted only by individuals with direct legal interest and units of local self-government from the sphere of their activities, she said proposing the German model for those changes.
According to the latest figures, there are about 8,000 backlog cases waiting for the procedure in the Constitutional Court. In the first three months of this year, the Court received an additional 1,500 cases.
Also on Thursday, during a parliamentary debate on the appointment of three new Constitutional Court judges, Vesna Pusic of the Croatian People's Party (HNS) said that it was necessary to change the model of appointment of Constitutional Court judges, adding that they should be appointed by the head of state.
She explained that the current procedure in which the parliamentary committee on the Constitution short-lists applicants and later the parliament selects new judges from the short-listed group, "makes it possible for individuals in the parliament to have great influence on the decision on the appointment of judges, while they have no personal responsibility for that choice. Personal responsibility is eliminated but personal influence is present," Pusic said.
Pusic referred to a recent imbroglio surrounding the appointment of Slavica Banic as a Constitutional Court judge, although another applicant Mirjana Juricic and some media contested that Banic did not meet the necessary criteria.
The head of the committee on the Constitution, Vladimir Seks of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), agreed that during the forthcoming amendments to the Constitution, changes to the procedure for the appointment of Constitutional Court judges should be considered so as to diminish the impact of politics on judges' appointment.