• 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

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"

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.

• 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.

Ministry of Justice, Bar Association, CSOs and Legal Clinics authorized to provide FLA

Judiciary, Centres for Social Welfare

Free Legal Aid applicants, potential applicants and general population.

Rita Marascalchi, Project Co-ordinator (Strasbourg)

Irena Cuculovska Jakimovska, Project Manager (Skopje)

Anamarija Mitrovska, Project Assistant (Skopje)

Useful links

• Launching of the new project on support to legal aid system on 17 April 2018
• Horizontal Facility website