INFOCIP announces the National Monitoring of Administrative Courts of Albania. Shella presents the findings in front of the President of the Republic and chairmen of all courts

INFOCIP organized on December 15th , 2017 the National Conference titled “Court proceedings efficiency in Administrative Courts of Albania  & Evaluation of Justice Reform’s effects”. One of the most disturbing shortcomings observed in administrative court proceedings in Albania are the frequent delays of judicial review of cases. Data analyzed by INFOCIP have accurately exposed the phenomenon through evidenced-based researched for the second consecutive year now.

In regard to Administrative Courts, explicit time limits are prescribed directly by the law No. 49/2012, aiming at delivering a swift adjudication to protect individuals from arbitrarily of state institutions in the shortest possible time.  The law provides for a 30 days time-limit for the adjudications in appeal stage and for 90 days for adjudication of cases to the High Court (administrative Chamber). According to the court practice so far, the 30 day deadline is by analogy the legal deadline for the first instance too. For the full legal reasoning and delivery of adjudicated cases/decision, the law sets the seven-day deadline for submitting the file to court secretaries at first and at second instance and 10 days for the Administrative College of High Court of Albania.

The findings of this Evaluation, supported by National Endowment for Democracy, NED, were presented by the Director of INFOCIP, Mr. Gerti Shella, in the presence of the President of Republic of Albania, Mr. Ilir Meta, of the Chief Justice of the High Court, Mr. Xhazair Zaganjori, and in presence of all presidents of Administrative courts of Albania, in the National Conference organized on December 15^th, 2017. The conference was attended by all international missions in Albanian that implement programs in the justice sector…

For 2016, INFOCIP has analyzed all court decisions given by the Administrative courts in the country and concretely:

• 11738 decisions issued by 6 Administrative district courts, as taken all-together in 2016
• 4738 decisions given by the Administrative Court of Appeal in 2016.
• For the Administrative College of the High Court, INFOÇIP analyzed 604 final decisions for 2016 and 710 decisions given in 2015.

In total there are about 125,530 judicial data analyzed for the purpose of this monitoring. This represents in the meantime the highest amount of court data ever processed in Albania for the purpose of a thematic evaluation.

The data analyzed by INFOCIP suggest that, during 2016, the indicators regarding judicial review continued to remain law in the courts of first instance, as shown by the ranking graphs below:

With regard to timely delivery of fully reasoned decisions, the court monitoring indicates a relatively good performance by these courts, with …% of them delivered within 7 days, as shown by the ranking graph below.

With regard to timely delivery of fully reasoned decisions, the court monitoring indicates a relatively good performance by these courts, with an average of 5.8 days delivery time. As shown by the ranking graph below, the best performing court in this regard has been that of Shkodra, followed by Gjirokastra, Vlora, Korca, Tirana and Durres.

The findings released on December 15^th, 2017 were of special importance for including for the first time a comparison analyses on courts’ performance during 2105 and 2016, indicating progress and/or regress. All issued decisions have been analyzed one by one to accurately indicate delays for each of them.

At the present, INFOCIP’s Court Evaluation Program remains the only to assess time limits of administrative judicial review in Albania. Findings and conclusions have been adopted on regular bases by both the Administrative Court System and main state institutions.

INFOCIP exposed since August 25^th, 2017 the findings of the special monitoring evaluation on Administrative Chamber of the High Court of Albania^[1]. INFOCIP announced this national assessment at a time when many administrative courts, including the High Court itself, suffer lack of judicial body and insufficient support staff.

[1] http://www.infocip.org/al/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/raporti-monitorues-per-gjykaten-e-larte-INFOCIP-NED.pdf