by Anna Madarasi, judge and a former spokesperson of the Metropolitan Court of Budapest*
[This blog is part of a series on the pandemic. The introduction to the series can be found here.]
Online hearings are on the rise across the world. In a significant number of European countries, the use of online tools in court hearings for civil and criminal law procedures were introduced even before the pandemic, although in different ways and extent. However, the use of online hearings has always been controversial. With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the courts almost everywhere in the world started closing doors to physical presence and looked for alternative solutions to move the cases forward. It quickly became obvious that an extension of online hearings was necessary, as judicial breaks and postponements seriously affected the right to a fair trial within a reasonable time. (more…)