"The threat of freedoms and fundamental rights is in the air"

Vienna. 150 years ago, lawyers were released by the new lawyer code. Since then, lawyers are no longer appointed by ministers. This means that the profession can be free and practiced by anyone. "Our mission is therefore to do everything possible to improve the rule of law," said Monday Rupert Wolff, president of the Austrian Bar Association (Örak).

In order to be able to statistically record their development, Örak has been using the "febrile rule of law curve" since 2016 to compare 11 specific areas. Wolff said: "Endangering fundamental freedoms and fundamental freedoms is in the air." The worst, however, is the location of the company.

For the present report, 410 out of 6,300 lawyers were questioned about the situation and sources such as Transparency International, Eurostat and the World Justice Project were consulted. The report was developed in cooperation with the Institute for Research on Legal Development of the University of Vienna and the management consulting firm Obergantschnig Management Partners.

As a result, the three indicators of the location sector, namely business creation, insolvency procedures and contractual content claims, show a negative trend. Wolff demanded, among other things, the reduction of legal costs in the event of a high litigation.

Less supervision required
The second worst area was fundamental rights and freedoms such as fundamental rights in general, access to justice, the number of convictions handed down before the European Court of Human Rights and the freedom of the press . Nearly half of the lawyers believe that this area will continue to deteriorate over the next ten years. This is despite the fact that fundamental rights and freedoms are by far the most important for more than half (53.2%). Second (10%) is the quality and stability of state structures.

Wolff called for the removal of fundamental rights interventions, "which entail circumcision and restriction", for example surveillance measures such as video surveillance. He criticized the fact that the time to register for meetings was extended from 24 to 48 hours. Legal confidentiality also leaves room for improvement.

Improvements have been made, for example, to the quality of the legislation, but here, according to Wolff, they started off badly in 2016. Wolff therefore called for binding standards in the legislative process, such as a period of time. Minimum badessment of six weeks. Currently, this percentage will be less than 75%.