Kosovo: Further support to legal education reform II

Details: Published: June 1, 2018

5 th Steering Committee Meeting in Pristina: Edita Kusari, EUSR; Laura Liguori, Kosovo Prosecutorial Council; Julia Jacoby, EU Office Kosovo; Katharina Tegeder, IRZ; Eric Vincken, Junior Project Leader; Christine Jacobi, Project Leader; Klaus Erdmann, Resident Twinning Advisor; Besim Morina, Kosovan Project Leader; Afërdita Smajli, JSSP; Melihate Rama; Ruzhdi Osmani, Ministry of Justice Kosovo; Valmira Pefqeli, Resident Twinning Advisor counterpart (from left to right)

EU Twinning

Project leader: Christine Jacobi
Junior project leader: Eric Vincken (CILC)
RTA: Klaus Erdmann
Responsible at the IRZ: Rita Tenhaft, Katharina Tegeder

The objectives and priorities of this Twinning project are closely linked to the development of the judicial sector in Kosovo. The demands to be made on the improvement of basic and further training and the specific content to be prepared for them depend largely on the progress of the negotiations between Kosovo and the EU (Stability and Association Agreement and the European Agenda for Reform 2016) and the process of rapprochement between Kosovo and Serbia (Brussels Agreement 2013 and subsequent dialogue process) but also on the internal constitution of Kosovo itself.

On 24 February 2017, the Act on establishing the Kosovo Judicial Academy came into force, replacing the Kosovo Institute of Justice. In the same month, this project organised a study visit for the heads of the two Councils of Judges and Prosecutors, the President of the Supreme Court, the Attorney General, the Executive Director of the Judicial Academy and other leading representatives of the Kosovo judiciary in Berlin and Brandenburg to present the fundamentals of German judicial basic and further training.

Since then, project work has focused on three main areas: strategy and organisational development of the Academy, reform of the legal traineeship for the judges and prosecutors (Initial Training Program) as well as drafting a basic and further training programme for administrative staff at courts and prosecutors’ offices. The legal traineeship training is still very academic and is of too little practical relevance.

Since May 2017, monthly workshops and round-table discussions with judges and prosecutors have been held to discuss and test the fundamentals of case-based training. Concrete court documents from Kosovo are being employed for this purpose, translated, didactically transformed and used as training material in “Train-the-Trainer” seminars. The final aim is to produce a training manual that will provide the younger generation of judges and prosecutors with new, more practical opportunities for basic and further training.