Final Word from Tuesday, April 30, 2019

So much attention has been paid to the "most brutal attack on the judiciary and rule of law" since the Velvet Revolution launched by Andrej Babiš and Marie Benešová that scant thought has been given to what the new justice minister has actually vowed to do. She told Právo that she will look for the reason for the failure of the CR to meet the 14 GRECO recommendations with regard to corruption prevention in respect to MPs, judges and state prosecutors. "No tangible progress was achieved so far concerning the adoption of a code of conduct for all judges," the report states. Even where codes have been adopted, "their content does not appear to reflect GRECO's expectations as regards such specific subject matters as reactions to gifts, third-party relations, etc." Compliance with the 14 recommendations is "globally unsatisfactory." The difficulty now will be to gauge how much of Benešová's attack on the judiciary is GRECO-compliant, and how much is brutal. [ Czech Republic Council of Europe judicial courts ]