[Info-Prim Neo analysis by Sergiu Ostaf from the series “Civil society keeping watch on the justice reform”] The good part of the justice reform strategy is that it describes the problems of each sector. However, not all of them are stated clearly. Others aren’t explained or argued enough. For example, if we speak about ensuring accessibility, then the problems are identified correctly. On the other hand, there is nothing said about the fact that legal assistance isn’t always guaranteed and this causes people to lose trust in the judiciary. The strategy proposes some solutions, but not all of them are related to the listed problems. For instance, creating structures and systems of interaction with the public is a solution for the insufficient accessibility of the court, however this solution sounds too general and it doesn’t say clearly what it means in practice. The chapter “Increasing transparency and efficiency” deals with the high number of courts and the disproportion between the number of courts and their caseloads. In some cases, judges are overloaded, in others on the contrary and this is a real problem. Another one is that judges often overlay territorially with police or prosecutor’s offices and this creates an informal link between these different branches of power. The proposal is to modify the court network in order to avoid such overlays. Again, the action itself isn’t explained clearly, so we understand that the existence of these informal links hinders the independence and efficiency of courts. The authors of the strategy suggest this is a problem, but don’t state it. Moreover, they offer no evidence and argumentation of this problem and if we look at the proposed actions – revising the territorial distribution of courts, we see it’s a very general measure. We often hear about implementation indicators like a developed study or draft law, but there are now clear indexes to evaluate the success of implementing these measures. Too often, the criteria of assessing the success of some projects are vague or don’t measure the impact but rather the process: a developed study or a developed draft law. This is a narrow-minded approach and doesn’t include the institutional reform of police and of the Bar. Although we had been previously announced that the strategy would have a European approach and would include all the aspects, the real approach is too narrow and includes only some of the sectors of the judiciary. This raises a question: how will it be coordinated with the ongoing police reform? [Sergiu Ostaf, head of the Resource Center for Human Rights, CReDO, for Info-Prim Neo]