TIRANA, May 18 – One and a half years after the establishment of the administrative courts, the court system dealing with issues related to the exercise of public power, is struggling to examine cases in time and make quick and transparent decisions due to a very high number of cases and low number of judges, a study has shown.
Findings of a study published by the Center for Public Information Issues show the Appeals Administrative Court in Tirana, which covers the whole of Albania and has only seven judges, tried only around half of the cases appealed from the six first instance regional administrative courts in 2014.
The Appeals Administrative in Tirana tried only 4,745 cases out of a total of 11,240 appealed cases in 2014. The high volume of the cases was also a result of the suspension of administrative trials in ordinary courts and their transfer to the special administrative courts. Some 4,700 cases in the first half of 2014 were transferred from the Appeals District Court whose power to try the cases came to an end after the establishment of the administrative court system in late 2013.
The situation has become critical as the Administrative Appeals Court has accumulated some 7,000 cases only for 2014 and the high volume is making it impossible to meet legal deadlines of examining cases at the Administrative Appeals Court in 30 days and in 90 days at the Administrative College of the Supreme Court.
The approval of the legal framework paving the way to the Administrative Court had been a perennial request by the business community to improve access to justice enabling faster procedural actions and trials.
The law approved after a long saga in late 2012 was described as an important step in reforming the judicial system, ensuring legal review of administrative decisions by independent courts, increasing transparency and fighting corruption in the civil service. It was meant to ease the case burden of other courts and allow specialised judges to deal with administrative cases, provided that the necessary resources are allocated.
The Administrative Courts of Vlora, Shkodra, Durres, Korca and Gjirokastra have 4 judges each while the Tirana Administrative Court has 16 judges. The Appeals Administrative Court in Tirana has seven judges. An Administrative College has been set up at the Supreme Court as the highest Administrative Court instance to complete the full legal infrastructure ensuring the independent legal review of administrative decisions.
