Strasbourg Court rules against Albania for “unreasonable length” of legal proceedings – Exit
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) sided with two Albanian citizens who had sued Albania for significantly and unreasonably delaying their respective legal proceedings.
Petrit Bara and Eduard Kola had filed separate complaints to the ECHR against the Albanian government in 2018 and 2019 respectively.
by Bara Case focused on his attempt to overturn a decision by the medical school to elect someone else as dean. He originally filed a complaint with the Tirana Administrative Court in 2016, after his own unsuccessful offer.
Cola the Albanian government sued for a decision that sentenced him to life imprisonment for premeditated murder.
In his Tuesday judgment, the ECHR ruled in favor of the applicants, ordering the Albanian government to pay them a cumulative fine of 4,700 euros.
The judges said the Albanian courts had violated Article 6.1 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which gives everyone the right to a fair and public trial “within a reasonable time”.
Regarding Bara’s case, the ECHR also concluded that the Albanian government had violated Article 13 of the Convention which states that if a person’s rights are violated, he can access an effective remedy, that is, that is, to bring his case to court to obtain a judgment.
The jury also argued that these long delays were unacceptable despite “the context of the in-depth reform of the justice system”.
Since the launch of its justice reform in 2016, the Albanian Supreme Court has seen its number halved, with only nine judges out of a supposed total of nineteen currently sitting on the court. This has resulted in a significant delay in judgments, with the court having a backlog of 36,609 cases as of February 2021.