On 5 April 2017, the new Council of Europe action “Supporting effective domestic remedies and facilitating the execution of European Court of Human Rights judgments” started in Tirana with its first Steering Committee (SC) The new action is carried out under the Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey, which is co-funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the CoE. It aims at improving the capacity of the judiciary to apply the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights at the national level. It further aims to enable legal professional to effectively apply remedies related to non-enforcement of national judgments, closely targeting undue length of proceedings, property compensation/restitution, and fairness of criminal proceedings. The action will be implemented in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice, the State Advocate, the Agency for the Treatment of Property, the Magistrate School, the School of Advocacy, the Constitutional Court, the General Prosecution Office and the High Court.
Claus Neukirch, Head of the Council of Europe Office in Tirana, and Yngve Engstrom, Head of Cooperation, European Union Delegation in Albania opened the meeting. Emphasizing that more effort is needed at the national level for the subsidiarity principle to be invoked, Neukirch said that the new action aims to improve the national judicial system so that cases are resolved at the citizens’ level, restoring thus the confidence of the public in the capacity of its judiciary. Engstrom stressed in his welcoming remarks the importance of property rights, stating that if not settled properly economic development can be hindered. He underlined that these issues are linked to justice reform and human rights application which are key priorities for European integration.
Suranga Soysa, Project Coordinator, Directorate General of Human Rights and Rule of Law, Council of Europe in Strasbourg, presented the draft Terms of Reference of the Steering Committee and gave an overview of the project covering its three components. While Antuen Skenderi, Senior Project Officer, Council of Europe Office in Tirana, presented the work plan and immediate priorities for the forthcoming implementation period. The project team treated this event as a platform for discussions with the project beneficiaries, and together they modeled the activities in line with the objectives of the project taking into account and incorporating stakeholders’ needs.
