The Minister of Justice, Catalin Predoiu, had a work meeting on Thursday with Gallina A. Vincelette, the regional director of the World Bank for the EU, Europe and Central Asia, the main topic being ensuring financing for the erection of the Justice Neighborhood and digitization of the judicial system.
According to a press release sent by the Ministry of Justice, secretary of state Bogdan Ilea and members of the leadership of World Bank in Romania, as well as teams of experts, were also present during the meeting.
"The discussions were focused on ensuring financing and construction of the Justice Neighborhood and digitizing the judicial system, from concept, technical assistance, elaboration and implementation of the entire project. Both projects will have a radical positive impact for litigants, by streamlining the way the judicial system works, cutting costs, simplifying procedures, reducing terms for processing information and documents and implicitly, upon the quality increase of the Justice act," the Ministry of Justice says.
On this occasion, current programs and ongoing projects for the judicial system are being reviewed, namely: refundable loan agreement for preparing the "Justice Neighborhood" projects for the feasibility study stage (May 2023); agreement for financing project "Improving Judicial Services" (December 2023); agreement for refundable consultancy services regarding functional analysis of Romanian judicial system (February 2023), financed through the Administrative Operational Capacity Program 2014-2020.
Aspects regarding the projects were discussed during the meeting, Minister Catalin Predoiu requesting the teams from both the Ministry of Justice, as well as the representatives of the World Bank to find solutions for speeding up terms for accomplishing the project components.
Furthermore, seeing that the current programs expire in 2023, talks were initiated for a new intervention dedicated to the digital transformation of the judicial system, in the broader context of the future program for the Justice Neighborhood.
Catalin Predoiu congratulated the cooperation between the two parties for "transforming the judicial system to be digitized as soon as possible," appreciating that implementation actions should be accelerated in a short timeframe.
Furthermore, he mentioned the importance of consultation and collaboration in achieving the project for digitizing the judicial system with the Superior Council of Magistrates (CSM), the guarantor of the independence of Justice, in line with the concept policy of the Ministry of Justice of permanently consulting with the representatives of the court authorities.
Also, the Ministry of Justice supported the need of ensuring complementarity with the Government's actions of promoting digitization at the level of the entire administration, as well as correlating with the enforcement of Romania's National Recovery and Resilience plan (PNRR).
The Justice Neighborhood implies the gathering of all justice institutions of the Capital City into a single real estate area.
Located in the vicinity of Romania's National Library (Mircea Voda boulevard), the neighborhood will group spaces intended for court rooms, as well as prosecutors' offices with their headquarters in Bucharest (court rooms, archives, offices for judges and prosecutors, clerks, contractual and auxiliary staff, technical spaces), as well as other institutions from the judicial system, Agerpres informs.