Exercising the right to a trial in a reasonable time in the Republic of Serbia
Constitution and procedural laws explicitly guarantee right to a trial in a reasonable time. The procedural laws have been changed and some new solutions, which have to enable a trial in a reasonable time, were adopted. The Decision on establishing of national strategy of judicature reform was adopted, in order to make the judicature more efficient. However, the inquiries show that there are still some significant disadvantages which affect the right to a trial in a reasonable time. Despite the new legislative solutions, adopted in order to accelerate the trials, some of these solutions are not completely sufficient or their implementation in practice is not entirely adequate. The Decision on establishing of national strategy of judicature reform sets up the right analysis of the current status, as well as "therapy for the healing" of judicature. However, it seems that current measures are not in accordance with this therapy. Technical modernization of the courts is very slow and personal capacities, on the level of the associates, is declining instead of getting stronger. The biggest disadvantage of the present legal system, regarding the right to a trial in a reasonable time is the absence of the efficient legal remedies with which the party could accelerate the judicial procedure, respectively with which it could give damages caused by the breach of this right. This paper shows how strict are the criteria of the European court of human rights in Strasbourg related to it and that the existing legal remedies in our legal system are not sufficient to meet these demands. The confirmation of this conclusion came from Strasbourg, when this paper was already written, in the judgment V.A.M. v. Serbia of March 13, 2007.