00:00Do Romanian judges work the most in Europe?
00:07Romania's president, Nicúcio Dan,
00:09recently claimed that judges in his country
00:11work two to three times more
00:13than their counterparts in other European states.
00:16He made the comments in the context of a plan by the government
00:19to raise the retirement age for judges to 65.
00:23Dan said he'd asked the government
00:24to implement the change gradually over the next 15 years,
00:28instead of 10 as initially scheduled.
00:30To compare countries, as Dan suggested,
00:33we can take a look at a recent report
00:34by the Council of Europe's European Commission
00:37for the Efficiency of Justice.
00:39In Romania in 2022, the most recent year recorded,
00:43almost seven civil cases per 100 inhabitants
00:46were heard in a first-instance court.
00:48This is significantly higher than the European median
00:51of two civil cases per 100 inhabitants
00:53and the highest rate overall,
00:55according to the Council of Europe report.
00:57It's a different story for criminal
00:59and administrative cases, however.
01:01Romania drops to around the European average
01:03for both of these, at 1.92 and 0.44, respectively.
01:08Montenegro's at the top, with 12.10 and 2.15.
01:12To help with this into context,
01:13we can also look at how many judges Romania has
01:16compared to the rest of Europe.
01:17The country has 22.9 professional judges
01:20per 100,000 people, according to the report,
01:23while the European median stands at 17.8.
01:26Compare this to the likes of the Netherlands, for example,
01:29which has a similar population size to Romania
01:31and has a professional judge ratio of 15.
01:34As you can see, it's overly simplified to suggest
01:37that Romanian judges work more than those
01:39in other European countries.
01:41They do have to handle significantly more civil cases,
01:44but this isn't the same for all areas of law
01:47or the level of instance,
01:48and cases are cleared at a similar rate
01:51to the European average.
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