Off I dash in the general direction of Belgrade, my first visit back there in quite a few years.
I have not mentioned here a new role of mine, namely a member of the Board of trustees of The Lord Slynn of Hadley European Law Foundation.
This is a group of utterly distinguished lawyers who join forces to help export best legal practice to countries who might need some support for law reforms. The Foundation was set up in 1998 on the initiative of British/Polish lawyer His Hon George Dobry CBE QC, and has been busy in many European countries since then in different ways. Latterly a lot is being done in Ukraine and Albania.
This latest initiative responds to the Serbia legal system’s own interest in having expert assistance to help the way appeals are run. In Serbia as in most of the former Yugoslav countries the court system tends to get very clogged up as their exotic self-managing communist legal traditions were not designed to be efficient. Remember Croatia’s problems?
Sorting all this out is a major part of these countries’ hopes for joining the European Union. Croatia is well down the road in that direction, but (says the EU) is still not doing enough to get its legal system fit for purpose. Others agree:
Meanwhile, a report by local NGOs in Croatia, including Transparency International, the anti-corruption watchdog, also said the June target was feasible, but pointed to serious problems in the way justice reform was carried out.
"While there has been visible progress in the number of high profile cases of corruption under investigation, the selectiveness of investigative and prosecutorial proceedings is equally visible, as well as chronic lack of valid convictions and seizures of illegally obtained property," the report reads
The NGOs highlight the "clientelism" in a law on golf courses adopted in 2009, which "derogates proprietary rights, favours exclusively one type of investment and stimulates corruption in the scope of spatial planning at local government levels."
Golf? Is nothing sacred?
Anyway, the Belgrade prole