Tens of judges cannot practice as their duties after the expiry of the probation period of five years weren’t extended up to the age limit. This way, the cases examined by these judges are undecided, with some of them having been pending even for two years. At the Centru branch of the Chisinau Court alone, 15 judges responsible for 4,000 cases that are now on hold have their duties suspended, judge Maria Frunze stated in an interview with IPN.

The judge said that this way, hearings are not held. On the other hand, the workload of the other judges increased considerably as the new cases are distributed to a lower number of judges. Over 35,000 cases are annually examined at the Centru branch of the Chisinau Court. By 350-400 applications are filed daily and the 22 remaining judges are entrusted with 15-30 cases daily.

Furthermore, they have to deal with tens of applications for accelerating the examination of cases filed by persons featured in the 4,000 cases pending at judges with the suspended duties. To solve the given problem, the judges should be named to post up to the age limit, as the law provides.

Otherwise, the number of complaints submitted to the ECHR about the violation of the reasonable case examination timeframe can rise. Likewise, the number of complaints in national courts based on law No. 87 on compensation for the damage caused by the delay in the examination of cases can also rise. This means new convictions by the ECHGR and a lot of judgments passed by the courts of the Republic of Moldova based on law No. 87.

The interview entitled “Republic of Moldova and ECHR, how the human rights are respected” was produced by IPN News Agency in the framework of the project “Support for the Justice Reform through multimedia coverage of cases of alleged injustice”.