January 2023 – December 2026

Strengthening the Quality and Efficiency of Justice in Kosovo* (KoSEJ III)

The project is co-funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe, and is implemented by the Council of Europe.

The project is part of the European Union/Council of Europe joint programme Horizontal Facility of the Western Balkans and Turkey II, co-funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe.

Context of the project

The project KOSEJ III builds upon the progress achieved under KoSEJ I (July 2016 - May 2019) and KoSEJ II (May 2019 -December 2022) and aims at further improving the quality and efficiency of justice in accordance with the tools developed by CEPEJ and in connection with the Strategy on Rule of Law Sector 2021-2026 and the Action Plan (RoLS) adopted by Kosovo in August 2021.

Project’s objectives

One of the main objectives of the project is to successfully foster the implementation of the RoLs by sustaining and expanding CEPEJ tools and methodologies notably on judicial time management, digitalisation of justice and e-filling, alternative dispute resolution (ADR), judicial map, organisation and accessibility of court premises, etc. At central level, the action will support policy making bodies and authorities in charge of the administration of justice: Ministry of Justice, Kosovo Justice Academy, Kosovo Judicial Council, Kosovo Prosecutorial Council.

Courts and prosecution services will also be more efficient using active case management, improved working methods with lawyers and new information technologies. Specific needs of justice professionals and court users will be addressed, based on strengthened communication between courts and their users and access to courts. Additionally, and in coordination with the “Dashboard Western Balkan” project, the collection, processing, and analysis of data on the functioning of the judicial system and judicial statistics will be improved.

Main activities

• Support to the authorities responsible for the administration of justice to monitor the implementation of the Rule of Law Strategy based on accurate and automatically generated judicial statistics.
• Capacity building activities on timeframes of judicial proceedings.
• Court coaching activities to increase consultation between courts, parties and other actors and to detect delays.
• Capacity building activities to authorities to better distributed human resources with an assessment of the complexity of cases, based on CEPEJ methodology.
• Support to courts to collect users’ feedback to enable courts to undertake measures to improve court organisation, court services and court premises.
• Training on CEPEJ cyberjustice and mediation tools to justice professionals. 
• Technical assistance to enable electronic communication between courts and  parties, starting with electronic notifications.

Project beneficiaries and stakeholders

Ministry of Justice; Kosovo Justice Academy; Kosovo Judicial Council (KJC);  Kosovo Prosecutorial Council (KPC) and prosecution offices; Courts; Kosovo Bar Association (KBA); Kosovo Chamber of Mediators.
 

* This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo Declaration of Independence".