The European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) successfully completed its small-scale project entitled “Human Rights Capacity Development for Legal Professionals to Improve Implementation of Legal Provisions in the Judicial System in Northern Kosovo”. The project included five activities over the last two years involving a total of 125 professionals in the field of law including lawyers, judges, prosecutors and professional associates.

On the 10^th April 2025, the Mission facilitated the last project-related roundtable discussion aiming at increasing productivity of court hearings and enhancing reasoning of prosecutor’s requests and drafting of court decisions – all essential elements to safeguard the important right to a fair trial.

In cooperation with the Basic Court of Pristina, EULEX brought together sixteen judges and prosecutors from all Basic Courts and Basic Prosecution Offices across all Kosovo regions to share their experience and debate on topics such as access of parties to criminal files, communication to the parties in the pretrial phase, quality of the reasoning in prosecution requests, drafting of court decisions, and management of court hearings.

The debate was built on key findings from the last EULEX Justice Monitoring Report and focused on practical examples.

Commenting, in particular, on the productivity of court hearings, in its opening remark the Chief of EULEX Case Monitoring Unit, Hubert Van Eck Koster, highlighted how: “Figures are now much better compared to 2018, when we started our monitoring: then 50% of the trials we monitored were unproductive, while in the last years this has improved to around 28%. This percentage is however still too high, while the Criminal Procedure Code contains several tools which can be utilized to overcome this.”

Following the discussion moderated by Judge Fatime Dermaku from Pristina Basic Court, by the Deputy Chief of the EULEX Case Monitoring Unit, Heidi Heggdal, and by the EULEX Justice Monitor Verginiya Micheva-Ruseva, participants agreed on the need to debate on law interpretation and legal text, also involving lawyers - as key actors in ensuring a productive administration of criminal cases.