Courts should be given more power in matters of budget and personnel - minister

RIGA - The new Minister of Justice Inese Libina-Egnere (New Unity) has made strengthening the independence of the courts one of her main priorities.

As the politician said in an interview on Latvian Television this morning, her goal is to make every resident and company believe in the judiciary - that the judgments are objective and will be executed.

In the view of Libina-Egnere, in order to strengthen the independence of the judiciary, courts should be given more power in matters of budget and personnel, for example, lower-level courts should also be given the opportunity to decide on their own budget.

The minister considers judges' salaries to be adequate, but the salaries of court support staff should be raised. The politician, however, noted that the government and the coalition still have to decide on the availability and distribution of budget funds.

Libina-Egnere sees the biggest problems with investigation and trial deadlines in criminal cases, where the investigation is slow, while in civil and administrative cases, the trial periods in Latvia are shorter than the average in Europe.

On the other hand, speaking about the implementation of the Constitutional Court's judgment in the case of the rights of same-sex couples, the minister noted that so far it has been partially implemented, but she represented the position that it should be implemented in full. According to the politician, the reality is that there are not enough votes in the Saeima for the adoption of the proposed Civil Union Law, so an agreement has been reached that the necessary changes will be made in several laws.

Libina-Egnere named as another work priority to work on finding international opportunities to bring to trial the war crimes committed by Russia against Ukraine.