In 2009, the Citizen, Democracy and Accountability (the former Citizen and Democracy) carried out monitoring at all district and regional courts in order to find out their practice in disclosing judicial decisions to the public. Monitoring and Analysing Public Access to Judicial Decisions is a project activity performed under the For Transparent Judiciary Respecting the Principle of Equality project.
The monitoring activities found out that a large number of district and regional courts fail to comply with the Act on Free Access to Information despite the fact that the law requires them to disclose rulings in their full wording, with the exemption of protected (e.g. personal) data. Several courts have taken a different – worse – approach to individual persons than to a civic association. Many courts have not responded to our requests at all or responded after the statutory deadline, refused to disclose a ruling on various grounds, or referred us to other institutions. Some courts have sent only an operative part of the ruling, without its rationale.