The session, which brought together executive and judicial officials, legal experts and lawyers, heard that more than 12,000 applications from Croatia had been sent to the ECHR and that, although most were rejected, several hundred rulings established violations of the European Convention on Human Rights, and many cases are pending.
Most applications against Croatia refer to inefficient investigations into war crimes, police harassment, poor prison conditions, unfair trials, the different practice in national courts and at the ECHR, and even sloppiness.
Justice Minister Orsat Miljenic said the inefficiency dated back to the 1990s and that the government tried to improve it by amending the Criminal Procedure Act. He conceded that prisons were overcrowded because of an increasing number of long sentences. He said better training and more money were most important for making headway.
ECHR Judge Ksenija Turkovic said the applications "force us to correct the mistakes in human rights violations," and that one should not aspire to compensation but making the entire system more efficient.
She said Croatia had no structural problems and that it was trying to deal with problems, that courts were changing their practice and that laws were "more or less OK".
Lawyer Ivana Radacic said this was not the case with domestic violence because it was treated as a misdemeanour and was often unpunished.
Croatia's representative to the ECHR, Stefica Staznik, said Croatia had problems with litigation and long proceedings.
Supreme Court president Branko Hrvatin said the ECHR handed down 1,093 rulings in 2012, including 24 referring to Croatia, and that of the 899 rulings on violations of the European Convention on Human Rights, 18 referred to Croatia. He said that this was a relative number given the 1.6 million cases in Croatia a year.
Constitutional Court president Jasna Omejec said this court, although still making mistakes in detecting and defining problems and often being unable to look at the bigger picture, had begun fulfilling its essential transformative role.