On April 20th, 2021, the 6th meeting of the Advisory Working Group was held within the framework of the project “Joint Commitment for Better Achievements in the Judiciary”.
This penultimate meeting of the Advisory Working Group also represents the penultimate meeting out of a total of seven planned meetings organized by the Center for Legal Research and Analysis and the Institute for Human Rights about monitoring the change of part of the laws from the legal framework of the Justice Reform Strategy 2017-2022 relating to the justice sector.
To maintain the continuity of holding meetings, the purpose and object for which the Advisory Working Group of civil associations working in the field of justice was formed, the topics of discussion this time were:
– Achievements in the implementation of the Justice Reform Strategy 2017-2022 according to the Strategic Plan 2020-2022
– Digitization in the judiciary
– Adaptation of procedural laws
– Current situations in court administration, challenges and recommendations
The meeting was held on the Zoom online platform, and representatives from the Association of Young Lawyers of the RNM, the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, the Coalition for a Fair Trial, the Institute for European Politics, the Association for Criminal Law and Criminology, the Center for Change Management as and the Association of Court Administration, who are collaborators in this project.
In the section on the achievements in the implementation of the Justice Reform Strategy 2017-2022, the current developments and announcements for equipping courtrooms in the RNM courts with ICT equipment that will enable online trials were discussed. Regarding these activities, according to the Strategic Plan 2020-2022, it is planned that they will be completed by the end of 2021, which means that it can be said that the work is being done within the stipulated period.
For this purpose, it is necessary, as stated by the members of the working group, to amend parts of the procedural laws in order to be able to exercise the rights that must be in accordance with the positive legal regulations of the RNM. In this section, the working groups for amending the Criminal Code of the RNM as well as the Law on Criminal Procedure of the RNM are active.
Regarding the work of court administration, the last changes in the Law on Court Administration were made in 2014, and since then, although there has been an initiative to amend the legal provisions, despite the announcements, only one meeting has been held so far during the year 2021 thus the status and conditions in the judicial administration remain at the same level. The Association of Court Administration underlined that the court staff is a crucial part of the judicial authority, which is inseparable, that is, more attention should be paid to it in order to improve the current situation.
One of the biggest current challenges at the moment is the vaccination of members of the judicial service. Since the courts work smoothly, and most of the time there are no conditions for protection according to the measures for the protection of the population (a large flow of parties, a large number of employees in the same room, no possibility of rotation of shifts, etc.) it is necessary to take into account the employees in the court service, who would receive priority in vaccination for protection against the COVID-19 virus.
At the meeting, a brief overview of the international reports from the EC and the US State Department regarding the current situation in the judiciary was given.
The project “Joint Commitment for Better Achievements in the Judiciary” is financed by the Department for Central Financing and Contracting (CFSD) at the Ministry of Finance of the RNM, and co-financed by the British Embassy in Skopje.