On May 19, judges of the Municipal Court in Varaždin (Croatia) paid an experience exchange visit to the Supreme Court of Latvia.

In the first part of the visit, the judges met with Veronika Krūmiņa, Chair of the Department of Administrative Cases, and Normunds Salenieks, Chair of the Department of Civil Cases.

Veronika Krūmiņa introduced the guests to the role of the Supreme Court in the court system, talked about the structure and tasks of the Court, as well as provided an insight into the course of court proceedings and case examination statistics. Normunds Salenieks and guests discussed the solutions of examining pilot cases in the courts of Latvia and Croatia, as well as talked about the communication between the lower courts and the Supreme Court regarding the provision of uniform case law.

In the second part of the meeting, Anita Zikmane, Head of the Division of Case Law and Research, introduced the guests with the tools for accessing Senate’s rulings – the Supreme Court website, the website of court rulings and the website of legal acts, as well as the principles for creating a case law archive. Croatian colleagues were interested in the stability of Senate’s case law and the importance of the Senate’s ruling as a source in court proceedings. The archive of case law rulings and the format of the availability of the Senate's findings on the website of laws and regulations likumi.lv were also discussed.

At the end of the visit, Croatian colleagues walked the corridors of the Palace of Justice, visited the great courtroom, the historic Senate’s courtroom, and the sculpture “Justice”, as well as learnt about the history of the Court at the Supreme Court Museum.

This week, within the framework of the experience exchange visit, Croatian judges also visit Riga City Latgale District Court, the Court Administration, the State Probation Service, the Council of Certified Mediators, the Riga Orphans' Court, the Latvian Judicial Training Centre and the Marta Centre. The exchange of experience is organized by the Riga City Latgale District Court within the framework of the European Judicial Training Network (EJTN) program for bilateral exchange of experience between courts.