- Funding Programme
- Year
- 2024
Improving judicial efficiency and budgeting in Latvia
The European Commission supported the Judicial Council to develop recommendations for justice-system institutional reform and a statistical methodology to assess the labour intensity of different case types and analyse staff distribution across judiciary institutions. The project’s outcome will help the Judicial Council strengthen budgeting processes and methodology, enabling data-driven decisions and future improvements.
Context
The EU Justice Scoreboard reports Latvia has 28 judges per 100,000 inhabitants, which is the 6th highest figure in the EU and 4th in government expenditure on the justice system as a percentage of GDP. However, the Judicial Council lacks a methodology to assess judicial productivity and allocate resources effectively.
To address these issues there is a need to provide recommendations for institutional reforms and develop a statistical methodology. The results of the project, by promoting effective, data-driven management reforms in the judicial budget process, is contributing to the achievement of both the general and specific objectives of the TSI. The project is strengthening Latvia’s institutional and administrative capacity by designing reforms to effectively address the challenges identified.
Support delivered
During 2024–2026, the contractor supported Latvia’s Judicial Council through European Commission funding. Key stakeholders, including the Judicial Council, the Ministry of Justice, the Court Administration, Court presidents and the State Chancellery, were contributing to developing a statistical model and administrative reform roadmap to enhance the justice system.
Throughout the project, Latvia was receiving tailored technical support, which includes:
- An analytical report on the current justice system
- Recommendations for institutional reforms to improve judicial operations and budget utilisation
- A new statistical model for assessing workloads and budget management
- A pilot implementation with training and a guidebook on court data collection and resource assessment.
Results achieved
The project resulted in two main outcomes: a roadmap for institutional reforms to improve the operational efficiency of the judicial system, and adoption of a statistical methodology for evaluating the workload of the national judicial system.
An analytical report compared Latvia’s approach with best practices from other countries and gathered insights from judges, judicial representative organisations, and other stakeholders on ways to enhance judicial efficiency.
The project produced recommendations to enable fuller judicial self-governance in court administration, a new statistical model to evaluate the judiciary’s workload and human resource allocation across the justice system. The methodology was piloted through training sessions.
As a result of the project, budgeting processes are expected to be enhanced, resource utilisation optimised, and the productivity and effectiveness of Latvia's judiciary improved, leading to a more efficient and impactful judicial system in the future.
More about the project
You can read the documents related to the project here: