For Anita Kovaļevska, this was the first Plenary Session of the Supreme Court as the Chair of the Department of Administrative Cases. When taking over the baton from Veronika Krūmiņa, the longtime Chair of the Department, the aim of the Department was set to maintain the quality of its work and to promote the quantity or, in other words, to continue to seek and implement solutions to speed up the examination of cases, in particular the completion of cases that have been pending for longer periods of time.

The Department has a long-standing and focused commitment to reducing case examination times, in particular to completing the examination of Department's longest-running cases more rapidly. While at the end of 2021 there were 167 cases pending before the Department for more than 2 years, at 31 December 2024 there were 31 cases pending before the Department for more than 2 years.

There is a positive development that the average time taken for a judgment to be adopted in cassation has decreased in 2024. In 2023 it was 964 days or 32 months, while last year it was 716 days or 23.9 months. The average time period for deciding on a refusal to examine a case in cassation was 4.3 months.

Unlike the previous four years, when the number of cases received by the Department of Administrative Cases decreased, last year it increased again by 48 cases. As a result, the backlog of cases in the Department also increased by 33 cases. The increase in the number of cases received also had an impact on the case examination rate, which stood at 95% during the reporting period.

Judicial dialogue

In 2024, the Department of Administrative Cases referred 4 cases to the Court of Justice of the European Union for preliminary rulings. In one of these cases, as well as in the 3 cases referred to in 2023, the CJEU adopted a preliminary ruling. The Chair of the Department considered one of these cases as the most significant one for the public, namely the case of a dispute with the State Revenue Service concerning a fine imposed for breach of national law on the prevention of money laundering and terrorism financing.

Last year, the Department referred one application to the Constitutional Court in relation to the notion of absolute prohibition in the Law on the Course of Service of Officials with Special Service Ranks Working in Institutions of the System of the Ministry of the Interior and the Prison Administration. Two cases which the Constitutional Court examined last year on the basis of previous applications by the Department also concerned the issue of absolute prohibition.

The Department continued its successful cooperation with lower courts by organising meetings of judicial assistants of the Regional Administrative Court and the District Administrative Court with legal research counsels of the Department, as well as meetings of judges of lower courts with senators of the Department. Regular meetings were held with the presidents of administrative courts.

Case-law developments

As regards case-law developments, the Chair of the Department named a number of categories of cases in which significant and law-developing decisions had been adopted. Firstly, these are cases relating to the protection of the foundations of a democratic state and the fundamental values of the state, the concept of self-defending democracy. There have also been important cases in the areas of competition law, procurement and taxation, environmental law, the Medical Treatment Risk Fund, consumer protection. For the first time, the Department examined the issue of the notary's duty of care in the process of protesting a bill of exchange. With regard to procedural law, the Chair mentioned a case in which a dispute was not between the state and an individual, but between two states – the Republic of Latvia, on behalf of which the Ministry of Justice acted, and the Republic of Uzbekistan – concerning the return to the Republic of Uzbekistan of funds obtained as a result of the confiscation of property. The Department acknowledged that such inter-state disputes should not be settled by administrative procedure, but should be settled in one of the ways provided for by international law - through consultations, negotiations, arbitration, the International Court of Justice of the United Nations, etc.

Key challenges in 2025

Anita Kovaļevska emphasized that the main task of the Department in 2025 will be to reduce the backlog of old cases and to improve the case examination time. All the resources of the Department will be concentrated to the maximum to achieve this goal.

The Department will continue to look for ways to improve and streamline the case examination process. A discussion has been commenced on decisions refusing to initiate cassation proceedings. The extent to which parties to proceedings in such cases are given reasons for the refusal to initiate cassation proceedings has a significant impact on the Department's workload. In the early days of the Department, these decisions were rather lengthy, seeking to respond to all the arguments of parties. The aim was to ensure that litigants felt heard and to increase public confidence in the judiciary. "However, the increased public confidence in the judiciary in Latvian society as a whole, on the one hand, and the protracted problem with the time limits for case examination in the Department, on the other hand, make it necessary to reconsider the length and writing style of these decisions," said Anita Kovaļevska, while emphasizing that more concise court decisions will in no way affect the fact that the court looks into every case with the utmost care.

The plan is to take a closer look at the experience of the European Court of Human Rights and the German Federal Social Court in dealing with cases and to assess whether there are any working methods that could be adopted. The Department will also seek ways of identifying cases requiring a preliminary ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union or filing an application to the Constitutional Court at an earlier stage, and of facilitating the preparation of relevant rulings at the earliest possible stage of the proceedings.

  •  The full report of Anita Kovaļevska, Chair of the Department of Administrative Cases of the Senate, will be published in the next issue of the Supreme Court Bulletin

 

More about the Annual Plenary Session of the Supreme Court:

 

 

Information prepared by

Rasma Zvejniece, Head of the Division of Communication of the Supreme Court

E-mail: rasma.zvejniece@at.gov.lv, telephone: +371 67020396, +371 28652211