North Macedonia: Supporting enhanced access to higher quality Free Legal Aid Services

Project Duration

36 months, 24 May 2019 – 23 May 2022

Budget

Euro 800 000

Key issues to be addressed

There is a need to support, through targeted capacity building, the main stakeholders to readily and efficiently implement the new law, while also enabling them to prevent and address future shortcomings through improved coordination and cooperation.
Regional Offices of the Ministry of Justice appear to be understaffed and existing staff suffers from limited resources and low levels of performance and motivation.
FLA literacy of both legal professionals and potential beneficiaries needs to be enhanced to support broader accessibility, with a special focus on women, children, and vulnerable groups

project components

The Action "Supporting enhanced access to higher quality Free Legal Aid services in North Macedonia" aims at enhancing the efficiency, quality, accessibility, and awareness of free legal aid in North Macedonia. More concretely the Action will focus on the:

harmonization of provisions, policies and practices related to free legal aid in North Macedonia;
capacity building for the main actors in the field (Ministry of Justice, Bar Association and CSOs) including more structured and continuous coordination between the main stakeholders;
awareness raising for the public and related institutional actors in the country to support increased access to free legal aid.

This Action is part of the Council of Europe/European Union "Horizontal Facility for Western Balkans and Turkey II"

Overall Objective

The Action aims at supporting the main actors in enhancing the efficiency, quality, scope, accessibility, and awareness of free legal aid provision in the country and addressing identified shortcomings. It builds upon the results achieved in the implementation of the previous Action on this issue (HF-35“Supporting Free Legal Aid Reforms in ‘the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”) and supports effective implementation of the new Law on free legal aid, adopted in 2019.

Expected Results

The legal and policy framework related to the provision of Free Legal Aid will be harmonised in line with Council of Europe standards.

Capacities of Free Legal Aid providers to deliver quality legal aid are strengthened.
Access to Free Legal Aid by the population will be enhanced and the efficiency of the Free Legal Aid in North Macedonia will be strengthened.

The project continues the work initiated under the phase one of the Project.

target groups

Ministry of Justice, Bar Association, CSOs and Legal Clinics authorized to provide FLA

Judiciary, Centres for Social Welfare

End Beneficiaries

Free Legal Aid applicants, potential applicants and general population.

Project team

Rita Marascalchi, Project Co-ordinator (Strasbourg)

Irena Cuculovska Jakimovska, Project Manager (Skopje)

Anamarija Mitrovska, Project Assistant (Skopje)

North Macedonian website

Access to North Macedonian website.

Useful links

Project News

Back Assessment of legal needs as a practice to improve access to justice

Horizontal Facility project - North Macedonia: “Supporting enhanced access to higher quality Free Legal Aid services"

Enhancing access to justice through a proper assessment of the legal needs was in the focus of the roundtable (webinar) organised in Skopje, with key stakeholders and legal professionals – an initiative of the EU and Council of Europe joint action “Supporting enhanced access to higher quality Free Legal Aid services in North Macedonia”.

During the discussions was underlined that regular assessment of the legal needs provides important data and a solid basis for a more efficient planning and provision of legal aid. This practice enables the elaboration and evaluation of relevant policies in the area of access to justice that respond to the needs of the population.

The participants from key institutions in the field of justice, including the Ministry of Justice, State Statistical Office, Civil society organisations (CSOs), Legal clinics etc., who attended the event had the opportunity to hear more about the legal needs methodologies from prominent international speakers such as Mr. Peter van den Biggelaar - former CEO Dutch Legal Aid Board, Mr. Alan Paterson, Professor of Law, Strathclyde University, Glasgow, Scotland, and chair of the International Legal Aid Group (ILAG), Mr. Martin Gramatikov, Director Measuring Justice of the Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HILL), as well as the national expert, Ms. Nada Naumovska, senior programme coordinator at FOSM and Mr. Goce Kocevski, national CoE consultant.

During the webinar local stakeholders were acknowledged with the benefits of conducting regular legal needs assessments, as well as the international good practices and lessons learned in conducting legal needs assessments. These discussions aim to ensure the support and co-operation of Macedonian stakeholders for adopting such practices in North Macedonia in the future.

This event has been organised by the action “Supporting enhanced access to higher quality Free Legal Aid services in North Macedonia” which is part of the joint European Union/Council of Europe programme “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022”.

Skopje, North Macedonia 20 October 2020