COURT FEES WAIVER AS A PRECONDITION OF ACCESS TO JUSTICE

Abstract

Croatian court fees waiver system has changed fundamentally in recent years. Unlike prior legislative solution, administrative bodies now grant waivers instead of courts and the criteria for waiver are expressly and strictly prescribed by the law. Introduction of specialized administrative body which decides in accordance with predetermined rules was expected to increase the number of waivers and to create wider access to the system in general. Although the reports of Ministry of Justice show the constant increase of cases in which court fee was waived, those numbers cannot alone confirm if the systems functions properly and to what extent. This paper thus compares Croatian legislative solutions and their application with the case of law of European Court of Human Rights, while the number of waivers is compared with the number of enforcement proceedings initiated due to the non-payment of court fees. In accordance with such comparative analysis and empirical data, this paper makes conclusions on (non)functioning of the system and makes proposals for the necessary amendments.