Honourable Speaker of the Assembly, Ms. Nikolla,
Dear Members of Parliament,
Ladies and gentleman,
It is my pleasure to present to you a brief summary of the work of the High Inspector of Justice institution for 2021, based also on the recommendations of the Assembly.
You already have our work report, so I will try to be as concise as possible, conveying to you the work done over the course of a year, the good progress, and of course the challenges we have faced on this journey, together with the group of inspectors and the team of HIJ.
As we all know, the High Inspector of Justice is an independent constitutional institution, established on February 1st, 2020, that examines, verifies, investigates and prosecutes every judge and prosecutor in the Republic of Albania who is suspected of having committed disciplinary violations. According to the law, the HIJ is set in motion based on the written complaint of any natural person, legal entity or public body interested, including the Minister of Justice; the Prosecutor General; members of the High Judicial Council or the High Prosecutorial Council; heads of courts and prosecution offices, as well as on its own initiative.
Leaving behind the difficulties of setting up an institution from scratch, both in human and technical infrastructure, during 2021, HIJ managed to achieve its goals set as the main priority – reducing the backlog of complaints inherited from the institutions and filling vacant positions of the inspection staff.
It is about a considerable archival fund of 2104 complaints, which contains unhandled complaints, partially handled complaints or in the initial stages of their review, as well as partially investigated or unfinished cases by previous bodies, such as the Inspectorate of the High Council of Justice, the Ministry of Justice, High Council of Justice, Prosecutor General, High Judicial Council, or the High Prosecutorial Council. The procedures followed by the previous bodies for dealing with these documentary practices, due to their limited and divided competences between different bodies during the transitional period, appear to have been developed in an incomplete and partial manner.
HIJ has created a database in order to present accurate data, related to the number of handled complaints, their objects, the claims presented in them, etc., in order to classify them and draw up a priority order of review. We are working according to a methodology whose priority is to avoid the culture of impunity, and forgetting. Complaints or documentary practices are treated according to a priority order based on criteria such as: the date of submission, the stage of treatment by the previous bodies, the typology or urgency of the treatment of the complaint, respect for the principle of equality and objectivity, as well as the necessary time for the examination and evaluation of each documentary practice. At the same time, we are paying attention to the denunciations that have been coming to the HIJ since February 1st, 2020, when the institution was established.
Of course, in the fulfilment of this objective there is a slowing factor – the lack of inspection capacities. As shown in the HIJ work report in front of you, the institution has a problem in filling vacant positions with inspectors and this is why, for the second year in a row, we are repeating the request for support from the Parliament of Albania.
During 2020, HIJ worked with only one inspector inherited from the former HCJ and has continuously requested from the Councils, the appointment of other magistrate Inspectors, because the law foresees 26 inspectors, magistrate and non-magistrate ones. The HJC has so far made seven calls for applications for judges to be the appointed in the position of Inspector at the HIJ Office, but there have been no candidates. There have been interested prosecutors for the position and HPC has appointed four prosecutors as Inspectors at the HIJ Office. According to the law, Inspectors are magistrate and non-magistrate ones and the latter are recruited by the institution. Four non-magistrate inspectors were selected from the competition in February 2021. So currently HIJ works with 8 inspectors (4 magistrates and 4 non-magistrates), while in September HIJ announced the call for 9 positions for non-magistrate inspectors and the procedure is continuing according to legal obligations.
The lack of inspectors remains our challenge, it is a concern that HIJ has repeated during this year, especially the need for judge inspectors.
As of today, there are over 4,700 confirmed complaints at the HIJ, compared to 3,054 ones at the end of 2020. This shows that citizens trust our institution and have high expectations and of course it shows the HIJ responsibility.
Taking into consideration that every complaint has a legally defined journey, which starts with review, verification and then investigation or archiving, with the existing capacities of the HIJ, during 2021, there were made 22 decisions to start the disciplinary investigation for 31 subjects of disciplinary investigation. Disciplinary violations, which the High Inspector of Justice has initiated a disciplinary investigation for, are classified as disciplinary violations while performing duties but also outside work as well as disciplinary violations due to the commission of a criminal offense with final decisions, which according to their nature, discredit the position and image of the magistrate or seriously damage the public confidence in the judicial or prosecution system, based on the facts and circumstances accepted by the court. The proposed disciplinary measures ranged from reprimand to dismissal. From the disciplinary investigation for 21 magistrates, in 2021, the High Inspector of Justice has proposed the initiation of disciplinary proceedings for 17 magistrates, or for 81% of the investigated cases, while it has decided to close the disciplinary investigation for 4 magistrates. The requests for proceedings were submitted to the High Judicial Council for 11 magistrates, and for 6 magistrates, the requests for proceedings were submitted to the High Prosecutorial Council. I would like to point out that out of the 17 proceedings, 7 of them came as a result of reviewing complaints submitted by citizens, which account for 41% of disciplinary proceedings.
Of course, numbers are not an exhaustive comparative measure of our work from year to year, because there are cases, for example, which are more complicated and require a longer period of investigation than others, but these are the statistics. While special attention is paid to the disciplinary proceedings, as the final moment of the work, because its primary purpose is not only to punish magistrates, but also to educate them about the importance of public trust in justice.
During 2021, the High Inspector of Justice focused on establishing and implementing the internal case management system for the investigative procedure, in cooperation with the Euralius Mission. It is a system that has been requested by HIJ, within the framework of assistance from Euralius, as we need it for our daily work in order to facilitate documentation circulation procedures and to tighten up our data security according to the relevant functions, to facilitate sharing tasks and handling documentation at the HIJ Office. Obviously, the system will be used more widely in the following months, with the renewal of the relevant licenses for its continued use.
In order to simplify and speed up the work of inspectors, it has been drafted the disciplinary investigation manual, whose aim is to support the interpretation and implementation of a new legal framework, regarding the disciplinary system for judges and prosecutors in the Republic of Albania. The manual includes the analysis and comments of the provisions, the standard forms built based on the clear requirements of the procedural law articles for the disciplinary investigation of violations committed by judges and prosecutors and it mainly covers the procedures that must be followed during the disciplinary process.
Simultaneously, we have also focused on inspection, as an important dimension of the HIJ work. Despite the insufficient number of inspectors and the high number of complaints, three thematic inspections, which are in process, have been launched so far, specifically: Thematic inspection of the courts and prosecutor’s offices attached to them, on handling requests for “Parole”; Thematic inspection on taking administrative and procedural measures within the framework of the implementation of general instruction no. 12, dated 20.07.2020, of the Prosecutor General “On the Regulation of Relations between Prosecutors and Heads of Prosecution Offices, Information, Transparency and Guarantee of Independence in Prosecution Offices with General Jurisdiction” as amended, as well as “Thematic inspection on compliance with the conditions and criteria for assigning personal security measures” for the criminal offense of “Unauthorized possession and production of weapons, explosive weapons and ammunition”.
After receiving data from courts and prosecutors’ offices involved in this thematic inspection and analysing them during the inspection procedures followed, for the thematic inspection “Parole” there were submitted 2 requests for disciplinary proceedings in 2020 and 1 request for disciplinary proceedings in 2021. As for the other two aforementioned inspections, the High Inspector of Justice is in the process of analysing the data administered for each thematic inspection and the results are expected to be released during 2022.
During this year, with the administration of the proposals that we expect from the HJC, HPC and PG, it will be finalized the drafting and approval of the annual plan of institutional and thematic inspections.
The focus of the HIJ work has been capacity building, both for the methodology and the inspection itself, and for this we have collaborated with international partners, both European and American ones, to obtain the best work practices for a process which is part of their tradition. Thus, during 2021, HIJ focused on researching methodologies of several European countries in order to determine the rules on the implementation method and procedural steps that must be followed in an inspection process. Specifically, the High Inspector of Justice has finalized specific memorandums of understanding for strengthening cooperation with the counterpart inspectorates in Bulgaria, Romania and Italy.
Since December 10, 2021, HIJ has been part of the European Network of Justice Inspection Services (RESIJ), with observer status, among members that are only from European Union countries, and has initiated the exchange of working practices from inspection services of the European countries. The cooperation with this network started last November in Tirana, where RESIJ members conducted a working visit to Albania and an intensive training with the HIJ team. Now the HIJ is also sharing its experience in international activities organized by the European Network of Justice Inspection Services. A few days ago, on June 24, we hosted an international conference of this Network in Tirana, with the support of the European Commission and the Council of Europe through the CEPEJ project for efficiency in justice.
Even during 2021, the HIJ continued cooperation with the Councils and transitional re-evaluation institutions, both for information or updated lists of magistrates holding office or when their term of office terminates, with the HJC and HPC, as well as with the IQC. The High Inspector of Justice Office has in every case treated the provision of information to these institutions with maximum priority. There have also had meetings with the Councils to identify problems of common interest encountered during the implementation of the law, agreement and coordination on the implementation of uniform standards, through guaranteeing a regular disciplinary process and respecting the independence of magistrates.
Transparency with the public has been the focus of the HIJ work since the first day of work, as the High Inspector of Justice sees the relationship with the public as one of the most effective ways, not only to guarantee public trust in the institution in particular, but also to justice in general. In accordance with this philosophy, the official HIJ website has been redesigned, in Albanian and English, to make it easier for every visitor to search and find information in real time. Of course, the greatest attention has been paid to the orientation of citizens in the process of complaining to the HIJ. In the most visible part of the page, we have a special section “How complaints are accepted”, where you can find detailed and simplified information on how you can complain to the HIJ. This section contains the Standard Complaint Form, along with relevant instructions on how to complete it. To help the complainant, we have published a number of examples on the decisions taken by the High Inspector of Justice in cases of accepting or rejecting complaints. While every working day, citizens are assisted at the HIJ premises by the complaint’s office team, in filing complaints and claims against judges and prosecutors. Within the function of transparency, every Monday, the figures of the work done during a week related to the received and handled complaints are published on the website of the HIJ, so that everyone can understand the pace of work of our institution. This process, but also the activity of the HIJ, is reflected every month in the institution’s Bulletin, in Albanian and English, which also contains statistics produced by the Complaints and Protocol Office, as well as the Coordinator for the Right to Information. To facilitate communication with the HIJ, in accordance with the citizens’ right to information, a phone number and an official e-mail address are available, the latter can also be used to send complaints. In addition to the official website, communication with the public is also done through Twitter and YouTube accounts. This is all in function of transparency because we think that it brings the confidence that we all demand from citizens. The complaint process can be carried out in person, every working day at the HIJ premises where our complaint office team assists the complainants with any difficulties or uncertainties in this process.
In June of this year, we launched a survey on the official website of the HIJ, to collect the opinion of the public on our work and this will undoubtedly help us to continuously improve.
I would like to underline that not only in 2021, but during these two years of activity, the HIJ Office has been oriented towards the education of citizens through the way of handling complaints. Specifically, the formulation of decisions aimed not only at the analysis of complaints, the verification of facts and practices, but often through them, the aim was to clarify, inform and educate the complainants with the legal provisions, including their correct interpretation and reading.
For 2022, we will continue to prioritize the handling of as many complaints as possible, because unfortunately, the problematics of three decades of transition are still reflected in justice and citizens want to see things change when finding their right in the face of the problems they encounter in the system, in the prosecutor’s office or the courts. I also have a personal sensitivity to this. Of course, we will need more inspectors, so we will continue to insist in this direction, as well as in increasing the professional capacities of inspection with the best practices from countries that have an early tradition.
Therefore, let me use this communication, from this platform, to bring back to your attention the ongoing challenge of the HIJ to fill vacancies for magistrate inspectors. Completing the Inspectors Unit with magistrate inspectors would significantly help the process of handling complaints, both the backlog of complaints inherited from the former HCJ, and the complaints received directly at the HIJ. In order to address the situation, we have proposed draft amendments to the law no. 115/2016 “On the Governing Bodies of the Justice System” and law no. 96/2016 “On the Status of Judges and Prosecutors in the Republic of Albania”, related to the review of the criteria that magistrates must fulfil to be appointed as inspector, at the High Inspector of Justice Office, by reducing the years of experience; temporary appointment of the magistrate who has submitted the request, until the completion of the procedures for verifying their assets and image, or shortening the deadlines for submitting requests and preparing the opinion from the councils; by removing the criterion of having an equal number of magistrate and non-magistrate inspectors and equalling financial reward for non-magistrate inspectors.
However, the High Inspector of Justice is completely open to any other solution, which would come from the legislator, so as to complete the group of inspectors in order to continue the fast-paced work.
Thank you!
