Supervision that does not supervise: The Ministry would rather close the file than admit a mistake

One would think that when something goes wrong in court, there is someone else to see if at least the state administration of the courts is working as it should. That if a submission is lost somewhere, is not decided on for months, the complaint is settled with a few general sentences, or it is not clear whether an important document even reached the person who decided on the matter, there is some last insurance. That insurance is supposed to be, among other things, the supervision of the Ministry of Justice. But what if supervision stops supervising?

The story may start out quite ordinary. A person has been on trial for several years in a very sensitive family matter. This is not an invoice or a fence dispute. It is about children, their place of residence, school, contact with their parents and relationships, which can change irreversibly month after month. A person sends proposals and requests to the court. Some are rejected, others are dealt with, others are not clear for a long time. And then something emerges that can no longer be dismissed as the feeling of a disgruntled party: the superior court discovers that one particular proposal was indeed not decided on time and that the court overlooked it. They even have to set a deadline for him to finally make a decision.

In a normally functioning system, the red light should be on at this point.

How could it happen that the proposal remained without a decision? Where did the problem occur? Was it registered correctly? Was he presented to a judge? Was it a single oversight, or was there a similar risk in other submissions? What has been done to prevent this from happening again?

But instead of such questions comes something else. Learning and rejection. Still the same "song" about the fact that the Ministry of Justice cannot interfere in the independent decision-making activity of the courts.

That is of course true. The Ministry is not supposed to tell the judge to whom to entrust the child, how to evaluate the witness or how to decide the appeal. But when one asks whether the document was presented at all, one does not ask how it should have been judged legally. When he asks why a decision has not been made on a particular proposal for several months or years, he is not asking a ministerial official to make the decision instead of a judge. And if he wants to know if his complaint was really investigated, it is not an attack on judicial independence.

It's about the same as if you asked the post office where a registered letter went and were told that the post office is not allowed to disclose the contents of letters.

It is here that the way the ministerial supervision works is becoming more and more absurd.

The judicial supervision department is headed by JUDr. Ivana Borzová. Her signature appears under many of the answers, which are very telling of the whole story. In one of the settlements, the Ministry of Justice practically said that the "exchange of views" on the way complaints are handled is exhausted. In other responses there was an even stronger message: any further submissions related to the case will simply be filed without a response, and even without confirmation of their receipt.

And everyone, not just a lawyer, should pay attention here.

The law allows not to re-investigate another complaint on the same matter if it does not bring any new facts. That makes sense. The office does not have to answer the exact same letter a hundred times.

But how can the Ministry know in advance that a future letter will not contain anything new?

What if the court issues a new decision in the meantime? What if a new document appears? What if the superior court actually confirms the delay? What if it turns out that a proposal was overlooked? What if another specific administrative problem arises?

And that's exactly what happened. A new and very important fact emerged: the superior court actually found that one motion was not processed in time.

So what is the use of the pre-announced "we will file further letters without an answer"?

This no longer acts as an oversight. It acts like "pulling back the blinds" or "sweeping it under the rug".

Another thing is even stranger. On the one hand, the Ministry repeats that it must not interfere in the decision-making activity of the courts and therefore cannot review a number of objections. On the other hand, however, he can confidently write that the previous authority acted correctly, that it dealt with the complaint properly, and that the ministry "completely agrees" with its position.

One must then ask: what exactly does this certainty come from?

What did the ministry actually control? Did it open the whole file? Did it check the records of individual documents? Did it find out when they were presented to whom? Did it compare the content of the complaint with what was actually answered? Did the court clerk ask? Did it check the history of the electronic file?

Or did it just look at the previous answer, find it formally acceptable, and write that everything is fine?

This is not wordplay. That is the very essence of surveillance.

A check is not a check because another letter with a transaction number is created. An audit is an audit when someone actually finds out what happened.

The next chapter almost resembles dark humor. In its responses, the Ministry itself admits that it reacts with significant delays due to the high volume of the agenda and significant understaffing.

The department, which, among other things, is supposed to oversee the functioning of the justice system and deal with complaints about delays and deficiencies, is not able to do its supervisory work by itself because it does not have enough people.

So who's watching the watchers?

It is even more serious in cases involving children. There, time is not just a number on the calendar. The child gets used to a new place of residence, a new school, a different life. The relationship with the parent may weaken. What was at the beginning a questionable and possibly illegally created condition, after a year can begin to be described as "stable circumstances of the child".

Just in 2026, the European Court of Human Rights warned again in the Novák v. Czech Republic judgment that family relationships must not be de facto determined only by the passage of time. If the state is slow to act, the possibility of real redress may become only theoretical.

And into this environment, ministerial supervision comes with the answer after a few months that it considers further communication exhausted.

So we have to ask.

What about the Minister of Justice?

Does he even know that the department of his ministry recognizes in writing a significant personnel base? Does he consider it normal that a supervisory submission waits for a response for several months or years? Does he agree with the practice where a person is notified in advance that further submissions can only be made without a response? Has he ever personally been shown what was actually done behind the words "the matter was properly investigated"?

What about the public defender of rights and the defender of children's rights?

It is the state administration of courts that is not exempt from the ombudsman's remit. If this institute is to have any practical meaning, isn't a similar case exactly the moment when an independent audit is supposed to open the files and find out if the supervisor was actually supervising?

And finally:what about the elected representatives of the people?

Deputies approve the budget of the Ministry of Justice. MPs control the government. MPs can interpellate the minister. Senators have the same responsibility to question whether the institutions of the state really work. So they will be wondering why the Department of Justice Oversight is publicly admitting to being understaffed? Will they want to know how many complaints end up simply confirming a previous opinion? How many submissions were made without a response? And how many times did it turn out afterwards that a person was pointing out a real problem?

Because democracy is not just about filing a complaint.

Democracy and the rule of law only become real when someone really reads it, really checks it and is ready to admit even the unpleasant possibility that the state institution made a mistake.

If surveillance turns into a letter factory explaining why it won't investigate anything else, then the problem is no longer one court, one file, or one disgruntled person.

The problem is a system that has learned to police itself so perfectly that it almost never finds anything.

Resources:

1. Act No. 6/2002 Coll., on Courts, Judges, Magistrates and State Administration of Courts and on Amendments to Certain Other Acts (Act on Courts and Judges), as amended. Available from:Act No. 6/2002 Coll.. In particular §§ 118–120, 164, 172–174a.

2. Act No. 349/1999 Coll., on the public defender of rights and on the defender of children's rights, as amended. Available from:Act No. 349/1999 Coll..

3. MINISTRY OF JUSTICE OF THE CR. 2026. Overview of superiors and senior employees of the Ministry of Justice. Prague: Ministry of Justice of the Czech Republic. Available from:Overview of senior employees of the Ministry of Justice.

4. CONSTITUTIONAL COURT OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC. 2005. Finding of April 28, 2005, file no. stamp Pl. ÚS 60/04, N 96/37 SbNU 297, No. 264/2005 Coll. Brno: Constitutional Court. Available from:Pl. ÚS 60/04 – NALUS.

EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS. 2026. Novák v. Czech Republic, Application No. 6656/24, Judgment of 9 April 2026. Strasbourg: European Court of Human Rights. Available from:Novák v. Czech Republic – Inter-courts