A roundtable was held for the documentary “Money Pits of the Judiciary System”, broadcasted by Top Channel on April 6, 2022. The documentary was realized within the project funded by the European Union entitled “Enhance Journalism to make Accountability occur and Democracy Function”, implemented by Top Channel in partnership with Friedrich Ebert Stiftung EV. Representatives from Chamber of Advocacy, Albanian Committee of Helsinki, civil society, lawyers, journalists and experts were part of the discussions. Participants analyzed the problems in the judicial system, from the hemorrhage of magistrates due to vetting, to the cramp recently created by the political proposal of creating the Judicial Map that is strongly opposed by the groups of interest.
During these discussions, lawyers and independent representatives of civil society emphasized the problems created by the new Judicial Map with access to justice covered by the documentary in details, based on concrete cases of citizens obliged to wander to the doors of justice for years.
Participants concluded that merging several courts and concentrating them on a single Court of Appeal, risks deepening the problem of stock files and further increasing the review time. Today, Albania has tens of thousands of stock files and a precedent has been established in Strasbourg that obliges the state to compensate citizens for the trial beyond the reasonable legal term. The bill that is at risk if citizens approach Strasbourg court is several hundred million euros. The representative from the Albanian Committee of Helsinki and the other experts as well, raised the concern that the proposals submitted by them to the Supreme Judicial Council have not been considered at all
