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Zagreb - Both ruling and opposition members of the Croatian Parliament on Friday supported the proposal to amend the Courts Act, under which all court judgments would have to be published on a dedicated website.
Presenting the proposal, Juro Martinović, State Secretary at the Ministry of Justice and Public Administration, said that all court judgments would be published on a dedicated website subject to prior anonymisation and compliance with personal data protection rules. He said that judges working on domestic violence cases would need to meet special criteria.
Noting that his party had been advocating for years that judgments of all courts should be made public, Social Democratic Party (SDP) leader Peđa Grbin said that anonymisation should be the exception and not the rule.
Anonymisation should be used only in specific cases such as family relationships or establishment of parenthood, while rulings on indemnification or the acquisition of ownership by prescription should be made public so the public knows "if there was any cheating or not," Grbin said. He added that by the time of the second reading the bill should explicitly specify which types of dispute court judgments can be anonymised.
Urša Raukar Gamulin (We Can!) said there was no reason for court judgments to be anonymised in cases involving legal persons, politicians or public figures, especially in cases of corruption.