Court Hearings In Slovakia During The Pandemic And After

• Published date: 17 May 2021
• Subject Matter: Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration, Arbitration & Dispute Resolution
• Law Firm: Kinstellar
• Author: Mr Michal Hru'ovsk'

The Covid-19 pandemic has created uncertainty in many areas, including the schedule of court hearings. During the first wave of the pandemic, Slovak courts in most of the cases cancelled scheduled hearings or suspended them to a later time. However, the practice of the courts was not unified in this regard. While some courts cancelled or suspended hearings, or even proceeded in such a way as not to determine the date and time of the next court hearing at all, other courts conducted hearings (or at least a portion of them). Summer 2020 was - to a certain extent - peaceful, and some courts were able to conduct hearings, as we can confirm from our own experience.

The second pandemic wave that began in autumn 2020 impacted Slovakia more seriously than the first one, and the state of emergency announced on 1 October 2020 continues until now. The situation from spring 2020 has therefore repeated - courts again started to cancel hearings or to suspend them. Practically no hearings have been conducted in typical commercial or civil matters since last autumn.

In connection with the currently improving epidemiologic situation, hopefully the situation will also improve with respect to court hearings. Under the recent change of the decree of the Ministry of Justice of the Slovak Republic (No. 24/2021 Coll., on conducting hearings, main hearings and public sessions during the extraordinary situation and emergency state as amended) made by the decree of the Ministry of Justice (No. 159/2021 Coll.) of 27 April 2021, during the extraordinary situation or emergency state the courts should conduct hearings not only in the matters expressly stated in the decree (e.g., certain criminal, status or family matters), but also in other matters. The exception is when the matter can be suspended. Considering the fact that in many cases hearings have not been conducted for more than one year, judges should in our view apply this exception clause truly only in exceptional cases. They should take a pragmatic approach and conduct most of the hearings as scheduled'obviously on the condition that all applicable hygienic rules will be adhered to (in particular...