# Pressure on Judges: How the Budgeting System Can Impact on Judge's Autonomy
## 6 Conclusions  
This is one of the first papers of an ongoing research project that will explore in detail an important and quite unexplored issue: The budgeting processes in place in some European judiciaries and their implication for efficiency, court's functioning, judicial independence, and accountability. Notably, this paper represents the first part of a large-scale investigation into the use of performance-based budgeting in Finland and The Netherlands and its impact on courts' organization and judges' behavior. The second part of the study will be dealt with using online questionnaires and semi-structured in-depth interviews with judges and court management in the selected countries, aimed at exploring how the change in the funding process can have an impact on judges' decision making and work, with pressure on production, definition of cases prioritization, access to resources (staff, technology), training opportunities, investments on innovations, etc. Therefore, there are still several questions that need to be answered, which will be addressed in the following steps of the research project. This work has focused on the impact of performance-based budgeting on judges' autonomy and independence, setting the stage for further research questions, showing the need for more empirical research on this topic, which will be carried out. The performance-based budget is primarily a tool to ensure a rational and fair distribution of resources among courts. The calculation of the resources needed to make the judiciary function properly is not based on just an incremental approach from the year before (historical line-item budget), but it takes into consideration the past and forecasted performance, to better estimate the resources needed, and then allocate them to the courts in the most effective possible way. Some positive impacts on the functioning of justice have emerged. In Finland, resources and judges' accountability have increased. The budgeting system has enabled the Ministry to \"coordinate the principles of allocation and ensure equality and objective rules34\" ([PERSON], 2017). Through the weighting caseload scores, apparently, there is a more balanced resources distribution among courts, with an increase in allocative efficiency. The following further results have emerged: a better internal knowledge and control, an increased transparency among courts and accountability to the citizens35. Footnote 34: ([PERSON], 2017, p. 44). Footnote 35: Interview with President of the Helsinki district court—28 August 2017. In The Netherlands, the performance-based budget has made the resource allocation process more transparent and based on clear and shared criteria, which contribute to improving allocative efficiency36. According to the Court of Audit: \"Since the introduction of performance-based funding, the cost of a court case stabilized after having increased for a long period of time (1983-2002), and the cost differences between courts and cases have declined. It is reasonable to assume that this is due in part to the introduction of performance-based funding.\"37  
Footnote 36: Interview with Financial Director of Council for the Judiciary in The Netherlands—11 April 2018. However, in the two countries, although to different degrees, judges are blaming the performance budget system to be the cause of too much pressure on efficiency, to the detriment of the quality of the decision. What stands out at this early stage is a two-fold impact of performance-budgeting on judicial independence: If, on the one hand, a budgeting model based upon transparent criteria can reduce the discretion in distributing funds and guarantee the external judicial independence, a budgeting model too much focused on production can divert attention from quality and undermine the judges' internal independence. The issue at stake is the relationship between judges and court management. Judges are public professionals embedded in a working environment: As public professionals, they need to be accountable.