Strengthening the Quality and Efficiency of Justice in Kosovo* (KoSEJ III)

January 2023 – December 2026

Strengthening the Quality and Efficiency of Justice in Kosovo* (KoSEJ III)

The project is co-funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe, and is implemented by the Council of Europe.

The project is part of the European Union/Council of Europe joint programme Horizontal Facility of the Western Balkans and Turkey II, co-funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe.

Context of the project

The project KOSEJ III builds upon the progress achieved under KoSEJ I (July 2016 - May 2019) and KoSEJ II (May 2019 -December 2022) and aims at further improving the quality and efficiency of justice in accordance with the tools developed by CEPEJ and in connection with the Strategy on Rule of Law Sector 2021-2026 and the Action Plan (RoLS) adopted by Kosovo in August 2021.

Project’s objectives

One of the main objectives of the project is to successfully foster the implementation of the RoLs by sustaining and expanding CEPEJ tools and methodologies notably on judicial time management, digitalisation of justice and e-filling, alternative dispute resolution (ADR), judicial map, organisation and accessibility of court premises, etc. At central level, the action will support policy making bodies and authorities in charge of the administration of justice: Ministry of Justice, Kosovo Justice Academy, Kosovo Judicial Council, Kosovo Prosecutorial Council.

Courts and prosecution services will also be more efficient using active case management, improved working methods with lawyers and new information technologies. Specific needs of justice professionals and court users will be addressed, based on strengthened communication between courts and their users and access to courts. Additionally, and in coordination with the “Dashboard Western Balkan” project, the collection, processing, and analysis of data on the functioning of the judicial system and judicial statistics will be improved.

Main activities

Support to the authorities responsible for the administration of justice to monitor the implementation of the Rule of Law Strategy based on accurate and automatically generated judicial statistics.
Capacity building activities on timeframes of judicial proceedings.
Court coaching activities to increase consultation between courts, parties and other actors and to detect delays.
Capacity building activities to authorities to better distributed human resources with an assessment of the complexity of cases, based on CEPEJ methodology.
Support to courts to collect users’ feedback to enable courts to undertake measures to improve court organisation, court services and court premises.
Training on CEPEJ cyberjustice and mediation tools to justice professionals.
Technical assistance to enable electronic communication between courts and parties, starting with electronic notifications.

Project beneficiaries and stakeholders

Ministry of Justice; Kosovo Justice Academy; Kosovo Judicial Council (KJC); Kosovo Prosecutorial Council (KPC) and prosecution offices; Courts; Kosovo Bar Association (KBA); Kosovo Chamber of Mediators.

* This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo Declaration of Independence".

Contacts

Council of Europe - Strasbourg

Emmanuel Baron
Project manager

Office of the Council of Europe in Pristina (Kosovo)

Stéphanie Lefeuvre
Project manager

Njomza Carkaxhiu
Project assistant

Translations of CEPEJ documents

Mediation Development Toolkit (in Albanian)
Mediation awareness programme for judges (in Albanian)
CEPEJ glossary (in Albanian / in Serbian)
Cyberjustice Guidelines and Toolkit, together with the Videoconferencing Guidelines (in Albanian)
E-filing Guidelines (in Albanian)
Councils for Judiciary in EU Countries

News

Back Workshops with judges to address the backlog of cases in the Civil Division in Kosovo* courts using CEPEJ tools for judicial time management

Iuliia TKACHENKO

Modified 1 Year ago.

Workshops with judges to address the backlog of cases in the Civil Division in Kosovo* courts using CEPEJ tools for judicial time management

On 7, 8 and 9 June 2023, the Vice President of the CEPEJ Ivan Crnčec participated in three workshops organised to support the Commission established by the Kosovo Judicial Council to monitor the implementation of the Strategic Plan on access to justice, efficiency and prioritisation of cases. During the activity, civil judges from the seven Basic Courts in Kosovo exchanged on challenges in processing old cases, raising among other issues the high number of “priority cases”. A presentation of court statistics, using CEPEJ performance indicators, made by the CEPEJ expert showed an important increase of pending civil cases in the last two years. The expert stressed the importance to closely monitor data on the number of proceedings in the courts as well as the age of the pending cases using the case management system. The workshop was also an opportunity to discuss possible ways to address the backlog based on practices undertaken in European countries. The beneficiaries expressed great interest in receiving additional CEPEJ support in the future and making use of the “Backlog Reduction Tool” to be presented at the CEPEJ Plenary on 15-16 June 2023.

This activity is organised by the KoSEJ III action “Strengthening the Quality and Efficiency of Justice in Kosovo”, which is part of the joint programme entitled "Horizontal Facility of the Western Balkans and Turkey III", co-funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe.

* This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo Declaration of Independence

Kosovo 7-9 June 2023