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Good practice Imported

Croatia's ANON — AI-Assisted Anonymisation and Nationwide Publication of Court Decisions

Croatia · Zagreb · See the Croatia profile · See the Zagreb profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 24% 73/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Since 1 January 2025, Croatia's ANON system has used AI/NLP to automatically anonymise and publish every court decision that concludes a case nationwide, on a searchable public portal, while legal commentators flag ambiguous redaction standards and new burdens on judges.

15–60 days
Publication window for first-instance decisions after dispatch
Croatia's ANON — AI-Assisted Anonymisation and Nationwide Publication of Court Decisions

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Ministry of Justice, Public Administration and Digital Transformation of the Republic of Croatia; Supreme Court of the Republic of Croatia
Period
Since 1 January 2025
Keywords
judiciary, transparency, data protection, AI anonymisation

Context

Croatia's Law on Amendments to the Courts Act (Official Gazette No. 36/24) mandated public disclosure of anonymised court decisions from 1 January 2025, with implementing rules set out in the Regulation on the Method of Anonymisation, Publication and Search of Anonymised Court Decisions (Official Gazette No. 134/24).

Objectives

The ANON system aims to automatically anonymise, extract metadata from, thematically classify and publish every court decision that concludes a case, nationwide, on a searchable public portal.

Activities

ANON connects to the eSpis case-management system for new decisions and to the archived Supranova portal for decisions through 15 December 2024. First-instance decisions are retrieved, anonymised and published automatically between 15 and 60 days after dispatch; appellate and higher-court decisions go through additional judicial verification before publication. The public search portal, odluke.sudovi.hr, is operated by the Ministry of Justice, Public Administration and Digital Transformation, offering advanced search and export in multiple formats.

Results

Since 1 January 2025, ANON has processed every concluding court decision nationwide under a binding legal mandate, though no independent figures on anonymisation accuracy or error rates have been published.

Conclusions

Croatian legal commentary (IUS-INFO) has raised open questions: the Regulation's redaction standards are described as 'framework-like' rather than precisely specified, criteria for judging which higher-court decisions are 'significant for judicial practice' remain unclear, additional manual anonymisation adds administrative burden for judges, and some courts have a documented history of publishing truncated decisions without marking them as shortened.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years) — First-instance decisions are anonymised and published automatically 15-60 days after dispatch; the system has been live nationwide since 1 January 2025, with archived coverage back to 15 December 2024 via the Supranova portal.
Staffing & skills
Ministry of Justice, Public Administration and Digital Transformation (system operator), Supreme Court of the Republic of Croatia, Judges responsible for additional manual anonymisation review on appellate/higher-court decisions

Conditions for success

  • Binding legislative mandate (Courts Act amendment, OG 36/24) and implementing Regulation (OG 134/24)
  • Integration with the existing eSpis case-management system and the archived Supranova portal
  • Defined publication timelines (15-60 days for first-instance decisions)

Common failure modes

  • Redaction standards described as only 'framework-like' rather than precisely specified
  • Unclear criteria for which higher-court decisions are 'significant for judicial practice'
  • Added administrative burden on judges for manual anonymisation
  • Some courts have a documented history of publishing truncated decisions without marking them as shortened

Commonly funded by

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Data sources

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