Filenews 4 September 2025 - by Fanis Makridis
"Vorkas blew and took it all away", was one of the comments in a well after the end of yesterday's meeting of the parliamentary committee on Institutions during which the latest report of the European Commission on the Rule of Law was discussed. The comment concerned what he said when the president of the Cyprus Bar Association, Michalis Vorkas, took the floor.
Without mincing his words and in a strong way, but without going out of bounds, Mr. Vorkas conveyed the image of the justice sector in Cyprus, without elaborating on mentioning that some have misinformed the European Commission about its real data.
The axis of his above reference was the note in the European Commission's report on the pace of administration of justice and decision-making over a period of 1.5 years, at a time when, as he said, "a case in the Court of Justice takes 17 years to finish".
In his initial three-minute and after about two hours discussion at the meeting, during which the well-known positions were heard by MPs and on the same wavelength of recent years, Mr. Vorkas woke everyone up and put them before their responsibilities.
It was not limited to the rhythms of the administration of justice. He also took a position on other issues, such as the delay in the issuance of decisions due to the lack of secretarial staff, the poor building facilities of the courts in Nicosia, the issue of the execution of decisions, but also the issue of cooperation between justice officials in general.
During his statements, the attendees in the crowded "Kyrenia" hall of the Parliament turned their attention to what the president of the Cyprus Bar Association was saying, while his positions were also the trigger for a discussion aimed at improving civil procedure.
"Trust..."
"I have studied the exhibition. I have the following remarks to make. The trust, he says, of the public or of companies and even businesses in justice is not what it should be," Mr. Vorkas said at first and immediately after he went into the essence: "And I wonder what it can be like, to have trust, when a case in the Court takes 17 years to finish? How can there be trust when in Nicosia you can't enter the buildings because they will fall? How can you have confidence when there are no secretaries to type the decisions of the Courts and it takes four or five months to make the decision? For this reason, there is a box file full of memoranda and letters, oral discussions that we have had since 2020 when I am in the public of lawyers personally... How can we have confidence when from 2023 the institutions of civil procedure, the new ones (...) have come into effect (...) and we claim to hold a meeting and organize workshops with the Supreme Court in order to find exactly those regulations that need comment, so that we can improve things and the lawyer and the citizen know how a case goes to the Court and how it ends more easily without the problems that exist?"
Enforcement of judgments
Mr. Vorkas also spoke about the legislation on the execution of decisions: "A bill has been pending since 2018 (...) and we are waiting for it to pass, to reach you to be voted on and for the citizen who will go to court, who will wait 17 years and will make the decision in four months, to be able to collect the money... Is this a rule of law? And we are waiting and discussing here now... It is not a Rule of Law! When will we discuss execution? It is not possible for the European to make the decisions and go to all the banks and take the debtor's data and the Cypriot citizen cannot! When are we going to do this? Banks cannot sell real estate in summary proceedings and not a citizen. I've been a lawyer for 32 years – I couldn't sell a memo... When will we see these things? What is the trust, then, in justice? And let me refer you to page 7. I fell from the clouds when I saw that a civil decision, he says, in 2022 ended in 361 days and in 2023, in 605 days, that is, in a year and a half. Well, sorry gentlemen, I don't know who gave them this information. We are misleading the European Commission, with all due respect."
After the above initial reports by Mr. Vorkas on the pace of the administration of justice, the chairman of the parliamentary committee, Dimitris Demetriou, intervened. He raised the issue with the statistics presented in the Rule of Law report.
The head of the Justice Department of the Ministry of Justice, Phaedra Grigoriou, commented on the following: "The truth is that the Ministry of Justice does not keep any statistics. The statistics are given - of course - by the judicial service that has the cases, which, however, the Courts send them to CEPEJ (European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice) and from there they are drawn in the Rule of Law report. The committee has its own methodology. He puts an average and that's how the results come out." Pasiourtidis agreedThe MP, Andreas Pasiourtidis, on the occasion of Mr. Vorkas' statements, commented, among other things, the following: "Nothing will be tried in two years. Someone gave her the wrong data to get the average. That is, these days are very far from reality (ed. he was referring to the average). (…) I am glad that a bill for the execution has come and it has quite rightly come, but I will bring back the issue of the primary court. We have made a reform of the High Authority and you remember very vividly our objections. We are confirmed for what we have said. It seems that the current government has no intention of touching the primary court at all and considers that the new institutions of civil procedure help. I'm telling you, not only do they not help, I think things have gotten worse. So here it is the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice. It has no plan to touch on the primary level."
"There can be no inequality"
- The president of the GPP is also intense on the issue of access to witness material
Mr. Vorkas also spoke of "error and 'inequality', referring to the fact that citizens who want to appeal to the courts do not have access to the witness material of the case that concerns them.
The main points from the second part of his statements: "Mrs. Charalambidou has repeatedly raised an issue that has to do with the decisions of the Court of Human Rights and the supervision of their implementation. A bill came to the Cyprus Bar Association and we did not disagree. There should be a committee to look into this issue. To move things forward. Regarding e-justice, I have a report from the Deputy Ministry of Research and Innovation that things are indeed going on the basis of i-justice, which will be modernized. But what is certainly troubling is when. Because if I'm not mistaken, it's over a period of four years.
Something else that has been raised is the citizen's access to the witness material in order to promote a case in the Courts (ed. MP Irene Charalambidou intervened and recalled a complaint by the lawyer Letous Kariolou who did not have access to the witness material of her clients). There have been cases in which someone turns against the state with a lawsuit and does not have the testimony that the Legal Service already has in its possession. It is wrong. There can be no inequality. There should be access. There is a case of a soldier who suffered heat stroke in 2015 (...) he is disabled, we have forwarded the case to the Courts and the parents do not even have the conclusion".
In his conclusion, he said, among other things: "The Rule of Law is not a stereotypical concept and we need to see this. We have to be quick and practical (...)".
