HJPC requests amendments to the Draft Law on HJPC, cooperation with the Ministry of Justice is not at a satisfactory level

The President of the HJPC, Sanin Bogunić, proposed that the agenda for the second day of the session be supplemented with an item on an additional check of the property statement of a judicial office holder for whom the Department for Verification of Property Statements submitted a negative report.

“This is the first time such a situation has occurred where we have a negative report, and we need to see what the Council should do,” Bogunić said.

He did not want to reveal the identity of the office holder due to the protection of personal data, explaining that she had just been appointed but had not yet taken office.

“This is our first such situation. You see that the system is functioning in this way, we are establishing it. The department is truly doing its legal work, and all those for whom negative reports are established will bear the consequences,” Bogunić said when asked by a Detektor journalist.

He said he did not want to prejudge the outcome of the Council's decision, as it would be decided on the second day of the session.

“In this specific situation, the Council needs to decide, but if the report is negative, it is very difficult for someone to take office,” Bogunić said.

In November 2023, the HJPC, by adopting a new systematization of job positions, formed the Department for the Implementation of Procedures for Verifying Reports on the Property of Candidates for Judicial Office – which is also foreseen by earlier amendments to the Law on HJPC, and the checks only began two years later due to a series of events.

In an earlier interview for Detektor, Vesna Pirija, head of this Department, stated that she hopes that by March 2026, the property statements of those appointed but not yet in office will be verified. This Department has received more than 1,400 statements and is obliged to additionally verify all those appointed to positions or promoted, as well as ten percent of random applications.

The European Union considers the property verification process one of the most important for Bosnia and Herzegovina's approximation towards the Union. Reports prepared for the EU have for years emphasized the high level of corruption within the judiciary itself, causing citizens to lose confidence in the work of judges and prosecutors.

The Council closed the agenda item related to information on activities regarding the preparation of the Draft Law on HJPC of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the public. Although the law is publicly available through e-consultations, Bogunić explains the continued lack of transparency by the stage the law is in.

“At the Council session itself, certain things are presented that are not ready for the public at this stage. I can say that we are actively working with the Ministry of Justice on the new drafting of the law… I can say that certain progress has been made in the new version of the draft law,” said Bogunić.

He explained that more than half of the Council's amendments were adopted by the Ministry of Justice of Bosnia and Herzegovina and that the Legal Affairs Department, together with the HJPC's legislative commission, submitted certain proposals.

“We adopted certain things at this session that we believe should be changed in the law, and we will also address the Ministry of Justice with these,” said Bogunić.

Bogunić considers the Council's role in drafting the law to be good, but states that cooperation could be better.

Detektor previously wrote that the new Draft Law on HJPC stipulates that elected members, the president, and the vice-president of the umbrella judicial institution can be appointed to positions even if the verification of their property and interest reports for the previous year has not been completed, while the recommendations of the Venice Commission regarding measures to prevent conflicts of interest, the number, and the method of electing members have not been respected.

The law proposed by the Ministry of Justice was published on the e-consultation page, but the HJPC has been closing agenda items related to this law to the public for several sessions.