1,000,000 Greeks to be vindicated in… ten years!

The Greek minister of Justice, Transparency and Human Rights Miltiadis Papaioannou announced earlier today that more than 1,000,000 Greeks are entangled in the wheels of the country’s Justice System as they are waiting for their cases to be tried, something that, most probably is to take place not earlier than in ten years time, specifically saying that the situation is dramatic.

His mission is to contact judges and lawyers in order to find the happy medium as to how to administer justice in the best and fastest way possible, at least in the present situation and the given problems.

For the moment, Papaioannou said that there are plenty of people who seek justice and want to see their cases finally going to court but are not successful. Also, many of the cases about to be tried might never reach a courtroom as their number is so high that at times judges choose to “leave them out” of their agenda and move forward with others which appear to be more important.

Ways to solve the problem

The relevant ministry has received certain proposals by the specialists of the field which could minimize and graduallysolve the problem.

- Filing lawsuits by the DA without further explanations, as well as filing all anonymous reports

- Repeal of the - current - necessary preliminary examinations or limiting its duration

- Repeal of the physical attendance of the accused person/s in front of the judges and repeal of the presence of a DA

- Formation of a single-person court of appeals by a court of appeals president or a senior judge

The minister stated that the re-organization of the Greek judicial system was occasioned by the visit of the Troika representatives to the local courthouses so as to examine the weaknesses they present.

Papaioannou made clear that what the president of the lawyers’ associations of Greece Ioannis Adamopoulos said concerning financial dealings between judges belongs to the sphere of fiction.