On December 2, Group for Legal and Political Studies (GLPS) held a Press Conference to publish the “Rule of Law Findings in Kosovo based on the Rule of Law Checklist: A state of deadlock” report, the third edition.

During this conference, GLPS presented the findings of the assessment of the Rule of Law in Kosovo – the third edition, based on the Rule of Law Checklist approved by the Venice Commission on the Rule of Law . GLPS prepares this evaluation on a periodic basis, where it evaluates the implementation of the law from the point of view of constitutional provisions, laws, as well as by-laws based on the five categories, which this list contains, namely: Legality, Legal certainty, Prevention of abuse (misuse) of power, Equality before the law and non-discrimination, and Access to justice. In this last report, it was found that there is a state of deadlock in the performance of the responsible institutions in implementing the principles of the Venice Commission List.

The report presented in the press conference covers the period May – October 2022. The assessment was made from the point of view of Kosovo’s constitutional provisions, laws, by-laws and their implementation in practice.

GLPS gave the average grade of fulfillment for Kosovo as 53.24%, which means that Kosovo has again scored a grade above the “passing grade”, which is not much different from the assessments of the previous periods. Out of the (5) evaluated categories, the category Equality before the law scored again the highest points, with a score of 70%, but compared to the previous evaluation where it scored a score of 80%, this category has had a decline. On the other hand, the Prevention of Abuse (Misuse) of Power category again scored the lowest, marking 37.5% compliance, without any change in points from the previous assessments. All other categories, Legality (44.28%), Legal Certainty (56.25%), and Access to Justice (58.2%) scored an average result. It is worth noting that, compared to the previous evaluation, there is no major change, however, the evaluation has a 2.8% decrease in fulfillment.

For detailed information, please click here to see the full report.

This publication is part of the project titled: “Monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of the principles of rule of law in Kosovo based on the checklist of the Council of Europe for the Rule of Law”, funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Kosovo, and implemented by the Group for Legal and Political Studies.