Online Trials – A Pathway to Efficient Judiciary

Center for Monitoring and Research (CeMI) is implementing a project called "Online Trials – The Pathway to Efficient Judiciary", which is financially supported by The Balkan Trust for Democracy (BTD), a project of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the United States Agency for International Development USAID.

The project aims to contribute to creating the environment necessary for the introduction of online trials in Montenegro, in order to address long-standing problems with the efficiency of the judiciary, which have been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 virus pandemic.

Based on previous experience and achieved cooperation with judicial institutions in Montenegro, CeMI wants to provide key stakeholders with a set of recommendations for legislative and procedural changes necessary for the introduction of online trials through project activities, as well as educating members of the judiciary about the benefits of online trials.

This will be achieved through the creation of a comprehensive study that will include an analysis of the current system compared to new solutions, as well as a comparative analysis of good practice in countries of European Union where the legal framework for holding remote hearings has already been implemented or is being implemented in practice.

By implementing this project, CeMI wants to take the first step towards the introduction of this, not only necessary but also inevitable, concept as a solution to some of the existing problems in the Montenegrin judicial system.