News
Conference "Enforcement Reform in Kosovo: A Call for Systemic Reform"
The intended result is a renewed dialogue about the extent and nature of the problem, a focus on possible solutions, and forward movement towards development and implementation of those solutions. The program was co-sponsored by the Balkan Enforcement Reform Project (BERP), a project of the Dutch Center for International Legal Cooperation, the German Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) and the Union Internationale des Huissiers de Justice (UIHJ).
The conference, held at the Grand Hotel Prishtina, was attended by over 150 individuals. Attendees included representatives of the Ministry of Justice, the Municipal Courts, the Kosovo Judicial Council, the Kosovo Chamber of Advocates, legal advisors from banks and insurance companies, and representatives of the major utility companies including KEK and PTK. In addition, representatives of major donor organizations attended, including USAID and EULEX.
The premise of the conference was that enforcement reform should be systemic – that is, reform should reach widely across all major laws and systems that impact on the success of enforcement efforts, because they work as a system and because there are multiple intersecting issues in the environment that must be addressed together. These include court fees, court procedure, the personnel involved in enforcement as well as their compensation and management, reform of the treatment of banks, mortgage reform, court record-keeping and data management, relationships between courts and other government agencies, and a variety of other issues.
Of particular importance to the conference was its focus on the backlog of authentic documents cases and means to address that backlog. Over 60,000 authentic documents cases are now in the dockets of court enforcement offices around the country, many of them originally filed years ago. Discussion focused on the importance of resolving these cases and reducing the backlog.
A number of important points of consensus were achieved at the conference. First, there emerged a widely-shared belief that civil judgment enforcement is a matter of key importance for Kosovo’s economic and legal development, and a consensus that legislative approaches should be developed and presented to the legislature for passage in accordance with the government’s legislative strategy, which calls for submission to the legislature of initial reform legislation during 2010. Additionally, a consensus emerged that reform must focus on the institutional structure of the enforcement process, in particular the compensation and organization of enforcement agents, and there was widespread interest in the approaches of other countries in the region that have adopted systems of private enforcement agents or dual systems including both private enforcement agents and court agents. Third, many speakers agreed that the courts in general, and enforcement offices in particular, require additional resources, and that well-targeted expenditures to upgrade the capabilities of courts will be of value.
The USAID|Kosovo Systems for Enforcing Agreements and Decisions (SEAD) Program works to enhance the foundations of contract law in order to improve the business environment and strengthen the Rule of Law in Kosovo. The SEAD Program is a three year USAID Project with the goal to strengthen Kosovo legal systems available to citizens and businesses for Contract Law, the Enforcement of Judgments, and the use of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR).
The aim of the "Balkans Enforcement Reform Project" (BERP) is to support the countries of the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia) in the reform of their legal system in general and more in particular ensuring a more efficient and effective functioning of the systems of enforcement law at the national and at the regional level.