On May 13, Group for Legal and Political Studies (GLPS) held a Press Conference on the topic “Challenges in the Rule of Law in Kosovo: Performance of the Judicial and Prosecutorial System and Citizens’ Assessment of these Institutions“. During the conference, GLPS presented the 8^th Edition of the Rule of Law Performance Index in Kosovo (RoLPIK). The first part of the report provides citizens’ perceptions for the justice sector, including numerous indicators, such as political influence, corruption, and bribery within the judiciary. In addition, it also measures citizen trust and satisfaction with the justice institutions, in general. It also provides citizen perception for the newly proposed reforms, including vetting and civil confiscation of illicit wealth. The second part of the report represents statistical data on the efficiency of the judicial and prosecutorial systems during the period of 2013 – 2022.

As per latest assessment, over 60% of the population believe that politics makes you invulnerable to justice. The Court and the State Prosecution Office remain the institutions most influenced by politics. In addition, about 50% of respondents estimate that justice institutions continue to be affected by the phenomenon of bribery. Courts and Prosecutor’s Offices continue to be seen as the least effective institutions in the fight against corruption, despite the fact that about 75% of respondents expressed their willingness to report cases of corruption and other criminal offenses.

In addition, more than half of the respondents denied that the justice system has improved in recent years. Citizens between the values 1= Not at all good and 5= Completely good, with a grade of 3.6 appreciate the initiative of the Government of Kosovo (Ministry of Justice) to reform the justice system, including vetting and civil confiscation of unjustifiable assets. Regarding the level of security in the country, after the armed conflict between Ukraine – Russia, citizens have assessed the level of security in Kosovo at the value of 3.42.

Furthermore, respondents were asked how preventive they see the punishments against the perpetrators of domestic violence/gender-based violence, where between values 1 and 5, from the average of the answers it results that these punishments are rated moderately preventive.

Regarding the demonstrated efficiency of the State Prosecutor and the Courts, during 2022, these institutions have resolved about 32% of the cases they have had at work. With such a degree of efficiency, it is meant that these institutions will need more than 3 years to finish all the subjects they have in the process, provided that within this period of time they will not accept new cases. From the budget allocation data for 2022, we note that the budget of the Kosovo Judicial Council and the Kosovo Prosecutorial Council will not even constitute 2% of the budget of the Republic of Kosovo.

The 8^th Edition of RoLPIK can be found here.

This project is supported by the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

Venue: GLPS offices (Str. Rexhep Luci, 16/1, 10000 Prishtina, Kosovo)