Addressing MPs, the minister said that the strategy envisaged concrete measures and implementation deadlines and called on MPs to monitor their implementation.
Dismissing criticisms by the opposition, mostly the Social Democrats, she confirmed their claim that the reform of land registers had started in 2002 during the term of the former government, but added that the World Bank, which granted a six million euro loan for that project, warned in late 2003 that only ten percent of the loan had been used.
"When I took up the post of Justice Minister in 2004, I found a negative assessment by the World Bank and a request for the withdrawal of the funds. However, the Bank decided to give us another chance," the minister said.
She added that the backlog of cases in land departments should be cleared by the end of the year, that all land data had been entered and verified and would soon be united with cadastral data, as a precondition for electronic land registers.
Commenting on objections by some MPs that nothing was being done to regulate the issue of overtime work of judges and courts, Skare Ozbolt said that regulations on overtime work had been adopted back in 2003, when a project was launched to reduce the backlog of court cases, however, it resulted in an increase of court cases.
She said that her ministry would soon present data to prove that it was during her term that the trend of ever growing court cases had been stopped for the first time in the history of Croatia's judiciary.
The minister said that the newly-adopted law on courts had introduced the institute of judicial inspection with inspection teams having carried out investigations in several courts, proposing in some cases that some court presidents be relieved of duty, which the ministry accepted.
She reported that the judicial reform strategy envisaged also the establishment of specialised departments for domestic and labour affairs in some bigger courts and the appointment of judges to deal with such cases in smaller courts.
Skare Ozbolt also announced long-term measures to reduce the number of courts and merge some municipal and magistrates' courts.