Dear Mr. Ambassador Vos,
Ms. Llagami
Mr. Shella,
Dear Participants,
Hello everyone!
I would like to begin with a thank you to Mr. Shella and the Infocip center for inviting me and organizing this activity, but above all, for drafting this report.
I personally, do appreciate the ongoing commitment of your Center regarding the monitoring of the courts’ activity, with a special focus on the duration of court proceedings and on conducting trials within reasonable time, also reaching conclusions with concrete and professional suggestions for these issues.
I believe that your role as civil society is very important, because civil society organizations play an important role in strengthening democratic processes, consolidating good governance, respecting human rights, as well as ensuring transparency and accountability. In my opinion, this should be done not only through monitoring processes and positive pressure on decision-makers and heads of new justice bodies, not only through supervising the performance of these bodies and demanding them to fulfill their responsibilities, but your role should go beyond this, by presenting alternative ways to protecting the citizens’ interests, making concrete analyzes and proposals for addressing justice issues and making a real contribution to the development of justice reform in Albania. This is because in my perspective justice reform as well as justice as a social value in general, cannot be only a battle of justice institutions. Undoubtedly, they have the biggest role and responsibility, yet the standards of justice, of the sense of justice and the rule of law must be cultivated by all of us, justice institutions, politics, the media and civil society.
It is in this context that I see and appreciate the report prepared and presented today.
On the other hand, the efficiency of the judicial system is a delicate and important issue not only at the national level, but also related to our path towards EU integration. The progress of the judiciary reform is closely related to Albania’s progress towards integration into the European Union, as one of the country’s key priorities. Albania is at an important stage of the EU integration process, where the involvement of all actors is essential. Judicial power with its reformation is one of the biggest challenges faced by Albania. In this context, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Dutch Embassy for the support given to this process. Thank you, Ambassador Vos!
Justice reform is currently being implemented in Albania. This reform aims to establish a reliable, fair, independent, professional, open justice system oriented towards accountability and efficiency, which enjoys public trust. The process of practical implementation of the reform has been and remains an essential challenge.
The measure taken so far within the framework of conducting trials within reasonable time, should not only be in terms of the legislative process, but appropriate measures and tools are needed to change the factual situation, in order for the laws to be implemented and the courts of all levels to function normally. We have the obligation to organize the legal system to guarantee compliance with the conditions provided for in Article 6§1 of the ECHR, as well as to apply a series of effective measures, in order to guarantee the right to deliver a final decision within reasonable time limits.
Courts themselves can apply some methods in the administrative aspect, to temporarily help speed up the court trial processes. Another mechanism for increasing efficiency can be the evaluation system of magistrates, which can continuously encourage them to improve their performance, or increase their human and financial capacities. However, it is worth noting that the last tool to be applied, which I find extraordinary, is the disciplinary proceeding of the magistrates for their lengthy judicial proceedings.
In this concrete case, it results prima facie, that despite the time limits provided in the procedural law, these deadlines have not always been rigorously implemented by the magistrates during the performance of their duties. In this case, non-compliance with procedural deadlines by magistrates should not be considered a priori as a possible disciplinary violation. In order to reach the conclusion whether there are actions/omissions of the magistrates which may constitute a disciplinary violation or whether the action/omission is related to their professional activity, a number of issues must be analyzed case by case through verification processes or disciplinary investigations, which are related to the identification of factual and legal elements on the disciplinary responsibility of magistrates.
The workload of the magistrates today, which is also related to the process of re-evaluation of judges and prosecutors, is an objective criterion which is taken into account for the conduct of court trials and the time needed for reasoning the judicial decisions. Therefore, also based on this objective criterion, the time the magistrates need to reason the court decisions, serves not only to increase the quality of the content of the court decision given to the litigants to whom this decision is directed, but also to enhance public confidence in fair trials, a principle whose essence is a well-reasoned judicial decision.
Non-compliance with the time limit set by the procedural legislation and in particular the deadlines provided for delivering the reasoned decisions within a reasonable time limit will not always be considered a possible disciplinary violation. There must be a lack of care, efficiency, professional skill or negligence, at such an extent that they go beyond the “boundary of reasonableness” and cannot be justified by the magistrate, in order to be considered a violation. The delay in reasoning and delivering the decisions constitutes a disciplinary violation when it is a repetitive, serious and unjustified case, and at the same time, it does not result from any situation that cannot be controlled by the magistrate or that is related to the dysfunction of the judicial system.
This has also been the institutional position held by the High Inspector of Justice in the thematic inspection, carried out a few months ago in two important courts in Tirana. According to this reasoning, the thematic inspection has also concluded with some concrete deadlines for delivering written court decisions, as well as verifications or investigations for certain magistrates of these two courts. It is worth noting that this inspection was a snapshot of the period in which the inspection was carried out and may not be applicable in other courts of the country, or in other time periods. Things vary from court to court and there may be different dynamics at different periods of time. But it is important to note that the High Inspector of Justice has shown the magistrates a methodology which will be used for the verification of their work, for the cases related to delivering written court decisions.
These are some of my thoughts that I decided to share with you in this meeting. I hope that this kind of activism will continue from you, Mr. Shella, but also from other organizations, for issues related to justice and to its bodies’ performance.
Thank You!
