The workshop brought together representatives of judicial institutions from all over Bosnia and Herzegovina with the aim of exchanging experiences and improving the application of the Criteria for evaluating the work of judges, in order to ensure an objective, consistent and transparent assessment of the quality of their work, as well as their expertise, impartiality and efficiency in decision-making.

Sedin Idrizović, permanent member of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of BiH (HJPC BiH) and chairman of the Permanent Commission for the Efficiency and Quality of the Courts pointed out that the HJPC BiH drafted and in February 2024 adopted the Reform Program for the period 2024 - 2026, which, among other things, includes the measure of adopting new criteria for evaluating judicial office holders in courts and prosecutor's offices in BiH, based on quality and in accordance with European standards. "At the session held on December 18, 2024, the HJPC of Bosnia and Herzegovina adopted the Criteria for evaluating the work of judges in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Criteria for evaluating the work of presidents of courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina.", emphasized Idrizović.

Support to the HJPC of Bosnia and Herzegovina in this process is provided by the EU4Justice project.

 "Almost ten years ago, the HJPC recognized the need for more balanced criteria for evaluating holders of judicial functions, which have long existed in EU member states. Therefore, through the EU4Justice project, we organized an exchange of experiences with relevant judicial systems before the actual application of the new criteria, which is planned for 2026.," said Drino Galčić, deputy head of the EU4Justice project team.

In order to support the implementation of this process, the EU4Justice project engaged the President of the High Court in Ljubljana and a member of the Personnel Council for the Evaluation of Judges of the Republic of Slovenia, Judge Anton Panjan, who spoke about the application of analytical criteria for evaluating judges from the perspective of international standards and comparative legal practice.

In the continuation of the workshop, the participants analyzed the practical aspects of the application of analytical criteria, especially looking at the sources of information needed for evaluation according to these criteria - the opinion of the head of the judicial department, then the opinion of the department of the immediately higher court, and the role of the judges themselves in the evaluation process, especially through the preparation of self-performance reports, in accordance with Article 8 of the Criteria for evaluating the work of judges in BiH. On that occasion, it was pointed out that the self-performance report of the evaluated judge should become one of the mandatory sources of information during evaluation in the future.