Our project “Support to the Constitutional Court in applying and Disseminating European Human Rights Standards” facilitated strategic planning workshop with 35 professionals of the beneficiary Constitutional Court of Kosovo*[1], and their colleagues from Constitutional Court od Albania. The event provided platform for discussion, exchange of best practices with Albanian colleagues, and finding solutions for the important aspects of the functioning of the Constitutional Court of Kosovo*, including more effective case processing and case management, and advancement of respective support services. 

Participants engaged in productive discussions on the reorganisation of the work of the Legal Unit of the Constitutional Court of Kosovo* in the context of increased number of cases referred to the court and made concrete arrangements on how to effectively respond to related challenges through improved effectiveness of case processing and quality of decision making.  To this end, some of the agreed actions include further strengthening the capacities of the Legal Unit in the field of professional research and utilisation of the practice of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and European Court of Justice (ECJ), and use of other external resources such as CODICES database for comparative research of constitutional courts’ caselaw from different countries, maintained by the Venice Commission. Participants also explored modalities for advancing quality and implementation of the court’s internal regulatory framework to improve overall functioning of the institution.

With regard to ensuring consistency of the Constitutional Court’s caselaw and applying best practices of the ECtHR in this function, participants agreed on drafting guidelines for introduction of standardised forms of decisions, and respective citations, in line with recommendations from the workshop with the ECtHR Jurisconsult, supported by our project earlier this year. In this respect, further functionalisation and structuring of the Constitutional Court’s Jurisconsult will be the priority in the upcoming months along with its positioning in the Legal Unit as a key knowledge management entity.

In respect of optimisation of the case management, participants defined priority actions on digitalisation of archives, further optimisation of the electronic case management system, introduction of automatised translation in line with ECtHR practice, and improvement of relevant web site features for better communication of decisions with external audiences. 

The workshop also provided room for induction training of the newly appointed judge of the Constitutional Court of Kosovo*, and review of the implementation of the Action Plan 2024-2025 of the Constitutional Court’s Strategy 2021-2025, for the first and second quarter of this year.

For most of the proposed follow-up actions, our project will provide support and assistance, in the framework of foreseen capacity building activities including placements with ECtHR, thematic workshops on ECtHR practice, direct support to the Jurisconsult Unit, procurement and installation of relevant software and IT tools, and others.