THE EU REPORTS AND OTHER SOFT-GOVERNANCE TOOLS ON RULE OF LAW, INDEPENDENCE, QUALITY AND EFFICIENCY OF JUSTICE SYSTEMS: ARE THEY RIGHT ABOUT THE CURRENT STATE OF JUSTICE SYSTEM IN CROATIA?

The EU is founded on the rule of law, which stands for the political and legal concept that em-bodies many guarantees and principles, including but not limited to having accessible, efficient and independent national justice systems across the EU. However, it is mathematically evident that some national justice systems perform a lot better than others. Moreover, the indicators show that the discrepancies between the justice systems of the EU Member States are so vast so that it brings into question whether the principle of mutual trust that serves as the very basis of numerous procedural documents delivered on the EU level makes sense at all. In his paper the author addresses various problems of the Croatian system of justice by ap-proaching them from two levels; from the academic point of view and from the public perspective. Both views are contextualized with the findings from the EU Justice Scoreboard and other reports. The trustworthiness of the reports is examined and crucial aspects of the problems within the Croatian justice system identified.