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

News

Retour National Co-ordination Body on Free Legal Aid in North Macedonia discusses key milestones

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

The 4th meeting of the National Co-ordination Body for the Free Legal Aid in North Macedonia gathered virtually to discuss important matters surrounding an efficient implementation of the Free Legal Aid Services for the citizens of North Macedonia.

About 30 participants from key institutions in the field of free legal aid such as the Ministry of Justice and its Regional Offices (ROs), Bar Association, civil society organisations (CSOs) and Legal Clinics authorised to provide free legal aid, had the opportunity to discuss important topics related to the implementation of the free legal aid system. The meeting was addressed by a representative from the Bureau for forensic expertise who discussed the challenges in the implementation of the Law on Free Legal Aid concerning the exemption from the costs of expertise.

Other important issues tackled referred to raising awareness of the citizens, the new informative bulletin for FLA, the Referral Protocol and Directory of organisations and institutions. The importance for an effective referral system that contributes towards improving the access to justice was highlighted during this meeting.

The National Co-ordination Body for implementation of the Law on Free Legal Aid (NCB) will continue its work and commitment towards achieving better co-ordination and communication among the main actors in the Free Legal Aid system.

The Free Legal Aid (FLA) campaign was also discussed, and the participants highlighted their support for the campaign and their commitment towards achieving bigger success in reaching especially the most vulnerable groups in the country. The new FLA website and visual identity have been presented, and the future activities of the campaign were discussed.

The idea of introducing a Bulletin on free legal aid has been presented and also discussed at this meeting. The participants accepted the idea for issuing a Bulletin, highlighting that it represents a very useful and informative tool about the novelties related with the FLA system in North Macedonia.

At the end of the meeting, the need and benefits of conducting a research on citizens’ legal needs was explained and also discussed among the participants.

The meeting 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”.