![](\"https:\/\/www.financialmirror.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Court-630x473-1.jpg\")
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The difficulties that the legal system is facing in Cyprus is quite known locally, as well as abroad.\u00a0 The situation is now so bad that various international agreements refer to arbitration or the agreement is subject to foreign law courts, such as in the U.K.\u00a0 This is absolutely terrible for a country that aims to become an international financial centre, to be forced to refer to another country\u2019s legal system.<\/p>\n
It is an impossible situation since there are approximately 10,000 legal cases submitted to the Courts every year, with only 1,000 (i.e. 10%) out of those new ones are heard on average, plus an average delay nowadays of 3-5 years.\u00a0 Then and upon issue of a court decision, the parties may submit an appeal that it might take anything from 2 to 3 years (and increasing).\u00a0 What sort of a legal state do we have in this country?<\/p>\n
The result of this delay is that justice is gradually breaking down with people not bothering to a large extent to ascertain their rights, the period of wait meaning added costs, whereas the constant postponement (13 times in one of our cases) cost our client without placing our foot through the court\u2019s door, some \u20ac2,500 so far.<\/p>\n
These sort of affairs have encouraged those at fault to keep doing it, no payment of rents and other dues, and in general we get the impression that the whole system is breaking down.\u00a0 Increasing the number of judges on the bench is not the absolute answer, whereas the economic situation has increased the litigation cases to the extent that even if the number of judges increase by 20%, there will be no notable improvement in terms of decision time.<\/p>\n
As if this situation is not enough ,we are now seeing signs of \u201cbouncers\u201d of all sorts, taking the place of the police and even a new type of judges.<\/p>\n
It is not unknown that in case of debts, some people use bouncers to collect their dues, where an ex-Mafia boss in a certain town was acting like a judge, to whom differences between individuals are resolved after a \u201chearing\u201d.\u00a0 Duly seated on a raised podium with the judge\u2019s hammer there, he provides his services for those who wish to do so. His decision is enforced by bouncers, applying the decision.<\/p>\n
Another problem to start legal action, is to be able to serve the writ.<\/p>\n
Official court officers either do not bother or are \u201con the take\u201d by reporting that they could not find the party to serve them with the court writ.<\/p>\n
End result in one of our cases and after using a court officer, (the case involved a non-paying tenant) was that we shut the electricity mains supply, the so far non-found tenant tried to put the meter right upon which he was caught and served with the writ. An Al Capone behaviour works, but is this the way?<\/p>\n
Part of the problem is our own advocates who usually ask for a postponement.<\/p>\n
When considering that each postponement is charged around \u20ac150 \u2013 200, no doubt that the opposing advocate does not object to the postponement.\u00a0 To this end the lack of judges or court time encourages this state of affairs.\u00a0 For our part and for amounts that people owe us less than \u20ac1,000 we do not bother to take legal action, since the legal cost and our own time spent in court (postponement or not) is several times is in excess of our claim.<\/p>\n
To be honest, there are similar reports on \u201cMafia business\u201d in other countries, especially in Italy, but we never thought that this sort of a situation will happen in Cyprus.<\/p>\n
Perhaps, Italy and other countries have a similar problem as we do, but are a few years ahead of our time.\u00a0 In addition to Italy, other European and US states have a similar problem and a similar way of solving differences, but for this to happen in small countries where more or less everybody knows everybody is a difficult situation to understand.<\/p>\n
To a large extent the tolerance in our country is much due to our fault.\u00a0 Our attitude of \u201clet the other be\u201d is one way of handling a situation, but to encourage all sorts of \u201cpermissive\u201d illegalities, this is another subject.<\/p>\n
Efforts are underway to address this state of affairs to an extent.\u00a0 This includes the introduction of various professionals to become arbitrators, the Technical Chamber of Commerce is an addition based on its\u2019 members experience acting as an independent arbitrator or witness on technical matters, but until such time that these bodies become effective and accepted or adopted by the public, it will take several year.<\/p>\n
So, what do we do in the meantime?\u00a0 In any case, any arbitration decision may be subject to a civil court appeal, so, at the end of the day we are back to square one.<\/p>\n
By Antonis Loizou F.R.I.C.S. \u2013 Antonis Loizou & Associates EPE \u2013 Real Estate Valuers & Estate Agents<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n www.aloizou.com.cy<\/p>\n [email\u00a0protected]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The legal system in Cyprus is facing significant difficulties, with long delays in court cases and a lack of efficiency. This has led to a situation where international agreements refer to arbitration or foreign law courts, such as in the U.K. Due to delays and inefficiencies, justice is breaking down, with people not bothering to pursue their rights. There are also reports of “bouncers” taking the place of police and acting as judges in resolving disputes. The use of court officers to serve writs is also problematic, with some officers not fulfilling their duties. Efforts are being made to address these issues, including the introduction of arbitrators, but it will take time for these measures to be effective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6405,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1521,3038,1972,186,311,279,2511,932,4533,3,2852,1763,553,3895,1823,187,4535,2841,2796,419,540,582,2120,4534,184,284,287,1812,1806,380,1524],"class_list":["post-6404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cyprus","tag-1521","tag-agreement","tag-appeal","tag-business","tag-columnists","tag-comment","tag-costs","tag-court","tag-court-delays","tag-cyprus","tag-delays","tag-efficiency","tag-electricity","tag-hearing","tag-increase","tag-international","tag-international-financial-centre","tag-introduction","tag-issues","tag-italy","tag-judicial-system","tag-justice","tag-legal-action","tag-legal-system","tag-police","tag-property","tag-real-estate","tag-rights","tag-services","tag-us","tag-witness"],"acf":{"keyphrase":"","keywords":"","sourceimg":"","country-category":""},"yoast_head":"\n