On October 2nd at the hotel Solun in Skopje, the CLRA promoted the research „Visibility of Constitutional Court in decisions making process with a special focus when deciding on the protection of the freedoms and rights of the person and the citizen“
The Preparation for the research is part of the project „Increased visibility of the work of Constitutional court “and it is funded by the Civika Mobilitas Program.
The President of Constitutional court in the introductory speech, expressed satisfaction with the interest shown by the Center for the work of the court, emphasizing their views on the efforts made by the court in order to improve the visibility in its work and the obstacles it faces, as well as the established practice. Consequently the President of the Center addressed the attendees and pointed out that the main purpose of the Survey is to increase the visibility of the work of the Constitutional Court, especially in the part of holding public hearings on the request for protections of the freedom and rights of the person and the citizen provided in article 110 line 3 of the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia.
The research was presented by the legal researcher Aleksandra Cvetanovska and it includes analysis of the data of annual research of the Constitutional court regarding the request for protection of the freedoms and rights of the person and the citizens and sorting of the quantitative data with number of public hearings compared to the actions of the Constitutional Court by case. Within this research, short interviews with prominent legal experts were conducted. The interview have been conducted in order to obtain answers to the questions and attitudes regarding the visibility of the Constitutional court, the mechanisms for improving them related to the maintenance of public hearings, the holding of public hearings as a practice, or the exception, the rules of procedure of the Constitutional court and the parameters when deciding on the holding public hearings in the procedures upon submitting request for the protection of the freedom and rights of the person and the citizen.
The sublimated conclusions show that the Constitutional court timely publishes all its judgment and decisions on website. The judgment and decisions are easily accessible and the search system is fully functional, which contributes significantly to increasing visibility of the court. From the reports of the Constitutional court, it can be concluded that there is insufficient interest from the court for its representation in the media. Also there is no information on organizing press conference and issuing newsletters on the court’s website. The data obtained from the Constitutional court of Republic of Macedonia point out that in most of procedures upon submitted request for protection of the freedom and rights there is no public hearing (no public hearings are held).
A discussion was opened after the presentation of the research, in order to obtain recommendations and solution for good practices and with that to strengthen the legal security and to improve the work of the Constitutional court.