According to opinion polls carried out over the past several years, Croatian citizens believe that the judiciary is the most corrupted segment of the society. This can change only by changing the way of appointing judges, improving the working conditions in courts and increasing the level of transparency in the judiciary, president of Transparency International Croatia Zorislav Antun Petrovic said.
Equal treatment before the law is a pillar of democratic societies, Transparency International said. When courts are corrupted by greed or political expediency, the scales of justice are tipped, and ordinary people suffer, the organisation added. Judicial corruption means the voice of the innocent goes unheard, while the guilty act with impunity, the organisation stressed..
The research carried out by the world's largest anti-corruption organisation shows that Croatian judges, despite the backlog cases, have higher annual wages then their colleagues in transition countries such as the Czech Republic and Romania.
With 44 judges per 100,000 people, Croatia is high above Great Britain which has two and a half judges per 100,000 people.
The new Global Corruption Report concludes that a corrupt judiciary erodes the international community"s ability to prosecute transnational crime and inhibits access to justice and redress for human rights violations. It undermines economic growth by damaging the trust of the investment community, and impedes efforts to reduce poverty.
Although it has more and better paid judges than the Czech Republic and Romania, Croatia allocates less funds than the two countries for the judicial sector.
The report shows that the judiciary budget in Romania amounts to more than 650 million US dollars, in the Czech Republic some 514 million, while Croatia allocates only about 345 million dollars to its judicial sector.