Supreme Courts have a fundamental indispensable role in the process of harmonising national judicial practice with international standards and addressing current justice reform challenges in the EU integration process. This was the key message of the international conference organised today in Tirana by the Albanian Supreme Court in co-operation with the European Union and the Council of Europe.
The conference gathered judges from the Supreme Courts of Germany, Italy, France, Azerbaijan, Türkiye, North Macedonia, Kosovo*, Montenegro, as well as the European Court of Human Rights and the USA Federal Tax Court. It highlighted the milestones of the more than a century-long journey of the Supreme Court of Albania, and the transition from national values to more universal ones in line with the European Convention on Human Rights, as part of Albania's path towards European Union membership.
This high-level conference in Tirana has provided a platform for fruitful exchanges between participants from Albania and other countries, addressing challenges in the context of the national implementation of human rights and securing independency and impartiality of the judiciary as a prerequisite condition towards European Union membership.
The Conference participants have discussed the essential role of the Supreme Court of Albania in endorsing a judicial reform that aims to adhere to the Council of Europe human rights standards as well as values on judicial independence, professionalism and integrity. The Court is a leading justice institution dealing with the harmonisation of judicial practices to align them with European standards.
This conference was organised in the framework of the action “Improving the protection of the right to property and facilitating execution of ECtHR judgments in Albania (D-REX III)” under the joint European Union and Council of Europe programme “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Türkiye”.
