Delays in solving legal issues can have several implications – costs, productivity, health, employment and relationships – and could deter citizens from following legal procedures to resolve their disputes in the future. The responsiveness of the justice system ensures that the “right” mix of services are provided to the “right” clients, in the “right” areas of law, in the “right” locations and at the “right” time.
There are several factors that can hinder timeliness of dispute resolutions such as a shortage of judges and other relevant professionals, lack of court rooms for hearings, limited use of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, and other issues related to a lack of funds. In addition to material barriers, inflexibility in justice systems (which do not allow for reallocation of cases), ineffective procedural rules (e.g. which do not allow prosecuting witnesses who refuse to testify), ineffective allocation of resources and low use of ICTs also affect case management.
Assessments conducted by SIGMA in 2017 across the region found inadequate electronic case management systems for administrative court cases in Kosovo and Albania. In Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo the ability of the administrative courts to ensure timely delivery of justice is further undermined by the low number of legal assistants supporting the judges in resolving disputes. They also show DTs are artificially low compared to EU countries, due to the “ping-pong” of cases between different court instances. Similar observations are made by the Council of Europe for several countries in the Western Balkan region.
For litigious civil and commercial cases, the disposition time (DT) in first instance courts was the longest in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where it took an estimated 574 days to solve a case on average, compared to just 159 days in Albania. Both in Albania and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the number of days to solve a case has been reduced since 2012, by 33 and 82 days respectively. The number of days to solve litigious civil and commercial cases has increased in Montenegro (13 days), North Macedonia (48 days) and Serbia (73 days) since 2012.
DT for first instance administrative cases is above a year for North Macedonia (370 days) and over two years for Kosovo (788 days) in 2016. Albania reported the shortest disposition time, 115 days. DT has been shortened in Albania by more than half, from 287 days to 115 days since 2012. However, in all other Western Balkans (no data is available for Kosovo) DT for first instance administrative cases increased in the same period. North Macedonia had the largest increase, of 53 days, from 317 in 2012 to 370 days in 2016.
