Four lower-level judges were dismissed this week following a decision by a disciplinary panel of supreme court justices, along with the high court’s chief prosecutor, due to a backlog of unadjudicated cases – the latest effort to try and speed up Greece’s notoriously creaky “wheels of justice”.
The effort to detect and root-out judges responsible for huge untried dockets, along with significant delays in issuing verdicts from tried cases began in September 2021, with 32 dismissals reported since then.
The four fired judges included an appeals justice in Thessaloniki and three first-instance jurists in Athens, while the case of an assistant first instance court prosecutor in Thessaloniki was postponed.
The fired judges were blamed for a backlog of cases lacking a decision that ranged from 114 to 241. For instance, one three-justice misdemeanor court in Athens has cases dating back four years and five months ago.
