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

Project News

Back Course for trainers on Free Legal Aid for the employees of the Regional Offices of the Ministry of Justice launched in North Macedonia

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

A training of trainers on Free Legal Aid Law has been launched in North Macedonia for the employees of the Regional Offices of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), with the support of the European Union and Council of Europe joint programme Horizontal Facility II. In co-operation with the Ministry of Justice of North Macedonia, the training of trainers (ToT) on Free Legal Aid Law will be conducted online (using different methodologies for online learning) in the next two months for 16 employees at the Regional Offices of the MoJ.

Ms. Lejla Dervisagic, Head of Operations of the Council of Europe Programme Office in Skopje, underlined the importance of the access to justice for the citizens, stressed the role of the Council of Europe and the Programme Office in Skopje in assuring equal access to justice for all and thanked the Ministry for the excellent co-operation.

The important role of the future trainers for the Ministry of Justice and for the overall legal aid system in North Macedonia as drivers of change for better implementation of the Law on Free Legal Aid and protection of citizen’s rights was stressed by Ms. Rita Marascalchi, Project Co-ordinator at the Council of Europe, who also informed the participants about the project and this initiative.

Mr. Petar Mirkovic, State advisor of the Ministry of Justice, stressed that this training will enhance the professionalism of the Ministry of Justice staff in the Regional Offices, when dealing with legal aid applicants and it will also strengthen the internal pool of trainers in the MoJ created under the first phase of the project emphasising the crucial role that the employees at the Regional Offices play in the Free Legal Aid system.

The event continued with the presentation by the tutors Ms. Maria Marinova Alkalay, Ms. Maja Atanasova and Mr. Goce Kocevski, who took the participants (enrolled employees at the Regional Offices) through the courses format, structure and content.

The launching event and the ToT course are organised by the action “Supporting enhanced access to higher quality Free Legal Aid services in North Macedonia” (link to North Macedonian website) which is part of the joint European Union/Council of Europe programme “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022”.

North Macedonia 10 May 2021