TRAVEL REPORT The Hon. Michael Atkinson MP Attorney-General ...

Immigration is not a contentious political matter and although some peoplefrom the former Yugoslav republic live in Slovenia, this has not become apolitical issue .Mr Karl Erjavec spoke on the substantive Criminal Law, and said it had beennecessary to be re-vamped to be able to handle the new forms of crime,especially human trafficking and money laundering . Trafficking for slavery andthe trade in human organs are on the increase as Slovenia is used as a transitcountry . Slovenia is bound by a directive of the E .U ., so it is a matter for thewhole Government, not just the Ministry of Justice .There have been some successful trials in relation to trafficking of Ukrainianwomen resulting in the successful prosecution of the traffickers . Sloveniabeing a country of transit means the trials are concluded in the destinationcountries, mostly Italy, France and Spain . There are three routes for thetrafficking - the Southern Balkan route using Slovenia as a transit country .It was reported that the representation of women in the judiciary is about 75%,with a slightly greater proportion of male judges in the Supreme Court . Theappointment of judges is made by the Judicial Council through public tenderand candidates must be over 30 years old . The Judicial Council compiles theapplications and on that basis, they select and nominate the judges to theNational Assembly . There was an attempt to amend the process but theintroduction of a constitutional amendment failed .The idea was for the Judicial Council to propose nominees to the President ofState, thus avoiding appointment through the National Assembly which canbecome politicised in the Parliament . This only occurred once, in 1995 . It wasthen that a permanent term of office for judges was proposed and onenominee was considered inappropriate because of his conduct in the previoussystem .Mr Erjavec said that courts have a poor reputation as there is a huge backlogof both civil and criminal matters and in any polls, the Courts always came lastwhich could be put down to many reasons . With the advent of democracy,people became aware of their right to sue . At the same time, the laws werecompletely revamped so there were a large number of new case laws . As aresult many cases relating to housing and privatisation cases came up leadingto many new actions .In 1995, according to Mr Erjavec the judicial system was reformed givingjudges a permanent term of office . This resulted in a "brain drain" leaving thejudicial ranks in the hands of a lot of young women who often left due to childbearingneeds .The result of these changes meant that to finalise an armed robbery there is atwo-year delay and there are 500,000 cases pending . Of those, 250,000 arefor execution of small claims and 160,000 are land register matters . Sloveniahas a huge problem of transitional issues due to private property not beingrecognised on the real property register. Notwithstanding that the result leavesTravel Report, Hon . Michael Atkinson, MP. and Ms . Vini Ciccarello M.P., August, 2004 2 1