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 Launch of two courses on Free Legal Aid dedicated to victims of domestic violence and children

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

How to apply the Free Legal Aid (FLA) system in cases addressing domestic violence and justice for children will be part of the trainings organised in North Macedonia for attorneys and legal professionals, organised with the support of the European Union and Council of Europe joint programme Horizontal Facility II. The trainings of trainers (ToT) on “Dealing with domestic violence cases in the Free Legal Aid system” аnd “Justice for children: Application of the Free Legal Aid Law when dealing with children” will be conducted online in the next three months for more than 30 lawyers, in co-operation with the Bar Association in North Macedonia.

Ms. Lejla Dervisagic, Head of Operations of the Council of Europe Programme Office in Skopje, during the welcome speech on the launching event, underlined the importance of the access to justice for citizens and the role of the Council of Europe and the Programme Office in Skopje in assuring equal access to justice for all.

Ms. Rita Marascalchi, Project Co-ordinator at the Council of Europe, in her welcoming remarks informed the participants about this initiative and introduced the ToT approach as a long-term investment for sustainability of project results and contribution to enhance the institutional role of the Bar for continuous education of lawyers.

Ms Jelena Ristik, Vice President of the Bar Association of the Republic of North Macedonia, during her welcoming speech stressed that these capacity building initiatives for lawyers will significantly improve the effective implementation of the Law on Free Legal Aid and ensure equal access for everyone with special focus on women and children, emphasizing the empowering, strategic and crucial role that the attorneys play in the FLA system.

The event continued under the facilitation of the international tutors Mr. John Eames and Ms. Maria Marinova Alkalay and the national tutors Ms. Bojana Netkova, Ms. Elena Georgievska and Ms. Ana Dangova Hug, who shared with the participants some key principles and challenges surrounding the implementation of the Free Legal Aid system in North Macedonia when dealing with cases of domestic violence and cases with children and took the participants (enrolled lawyers) through the courses format, programme, structure and content. Following the launching event, the courses will be implemented online using different methodologies for online learning for the selected group of participants.

The launching event and the ToT courses are 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”.

North Macedonia 5 March 2021