Representatives of the Kosovo Chamber of Private Enforcement Agents and the Kosovo Ministry of Justice visited Vilnius on 2-3 July. The purpose of the visit was to get acquainted with the activities of the Lithuanian self-governance institutions of judicial officers and the organisation of debt enforcement processes in our country.
The Kosovo Private Private Enforcement Agents’ organisation is twice as young as the Chamber of Judicial Officers of Lithuania, and the experience of the Lithuanian Chamber of Judicial Officers in ensuring the consolidation of the judicial officers' profession and the development of high standards of professional activity is of particular value to the colleagues. And although the Kosovo Chamber of Private Enforcement Agents, which currently unites 45 enforcement agents, is more than twice as small in terms of members, the list of challenges and issues to be addressed is just as extensive.
By the way, we can also find examples of good practices of judicial officers in Kosovo. Here, as in Belgium, judicial officers have the right to recover undisputed debts without a court order. According to Arben Gashi, chairman of the Ethics Committee of the Kosovo Chamber of Enforcement Agents, this kind of assistance from enforcemenr agents is very much needed by utility and other service providers. It disciplines customers and greatly simplifies debt enforcement in cases where customers do not pay on time.
During the meeting-discussion at the Lithuanian Chamber of Judicial officers, the Chairman of the Presidium, judicial officer Irmantas Gaidelis, presented the activities of this collegial governing body of the Lithuanian Chamber of Judicial Officers to the guests. He said that the Presidium, which meets more than 30 times every year, works as a forge for strategic decisions and idea generation and aims to ensure continuity of strategic work. One of the successful ideas implemented by the Presidium is the procedure for dealing with complaints against judicial officers‘ proceedings, which has been in force since 2011, whereby a complaint against a judicial officer‘s proceedings is first lodged with the judicial officer, and the court decides on the dispute only if the judicial officer rejects the complaint. Around one fifth of all complaints against judicial officer proceedings received by judicial officer offices are upheld, which has led to a corresponding reduction in the workload of courts.
Artūras Auglys, a member of the Court of Honour of Judicial Officers, presented to his colleagues from Kosovo the mechanisms of disciplinary liability for judicial officers and judicial officer assistants in Lithuania. As Mr. A. Auglys pointed out, during the 20 years of its activity, the Court of Honour of of Judicial Officers had to examine 165 disciplinary cases, but penalties were imposed in only 100 cases, as not all the actions assessed were recognised as disciplinary offences. The guests were particularly interested in the structural changes implemented in 2021, when the Court of the Honour of Judicial Officers are also include two public representatives.
Dovilė Satkauskienė, the Direktor of the Chamber of Judicial Officers of Lithuania, told during the meeting about the functions performed by the Lithuanian Chamber of judicial officers. These include not only representing the interests of judicial officers in various organisations, courts and inspections of judicial officers‘ activities, but also organising professional qualification trainings, events and conferences for judicial officers. Another important function is the preparation of written enforcement documents for centralised distribution and uploading into the Judicial Officers Information System, with approximately 25 000 enforcement documents processed annually.
Svetlana Kastanauskienė, a judcial officer and the Chairperson of the Audit Commission of the Chamber of Judicial Officers of Lithuania, also participated in the discussion.
On the second day of the visit, the guests visited the State Enterprise Centre of Registers, where they were introduced to information technology solutions in the process of enforcement of judgments and learned about the principle of the proportionate distribution of recovered funds in the Information System for Limitation of Monetary Funds (PLAIS).
Meeting at the office of judicial officer R. Vasiliauskas
In the offices of judicial officers Robertas Vasiliauskas and Nemira Šiugždaitė-Stakeliūnė and Darius Stakeliūnas, colleagues from Kosovo had the opportunity to see how the functionalities of Judicial Officers Information System work, which create an electronic enforcement file and ensure the processes of enforcement of judgments in the electronic space.
Lithuania‘s experience in introducing electronic auctions, transferring other decision enforcement processes to the electronic space, developing judicial officers services and functions has also been adopted by Latvia, Estonia, Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine, Bulgaria and Macedonia.
I. Shala, President of the Kosovo Chamber of Enforcement Agents, and I. Gaidelis, President of the Presidium of the Chamber of Judicial Officers of Lithuania. Symbolic souvenir for the Lithuanian Chamber
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