The lack of witnesses or parties in the process are the main cause of the postponement of the court hearings that lead to the endless extension of the trials in almost all the courts of the first instance of the country. A research conducted by the Center for Transparency and Free Information, supported by the British embassy in Tirana, has made it possible during the year 2013-2014 to monitor many judicial processes that have been postponed over a period of several months.
The lack of witnesses or parties in the process are the main cause of the postponement of the court hearings that lead to the endless extension of the trials in almost all the courts of the first instance of the country. A research conducted by the Center for Transparency and Free Information, supported by the British embassy in Tirana, has made it possible during the year 2013-2014 to monitor many judicial processes that have been postponed over a period of several months.
According to findings that have been observed in over a hundred such processes, trials are postponed mainly because witnesses are reluctant to come to trials. About 40 percent of postponed hearings are due to the lack of witnesses or parties in the process. Witnesses do not come to court because they have not been notified in half of the cases, while about 30 percent of them do not come even though they have accepted receiving the notification.
Even in an OSCE monitoring report on the courts, three factors are presented that cause the prolongation of court proceedings, where the emphasis falls mainly on the problems of the courts for the notification and summoning of the parties to the trial due to the lack of addresses, the lack of the parties to the trial and end ineffective trial preparation procedures.
The project supported by the British embassy in Tirana suggests that the courts use the advanced digital notification services of the Albanian post office through which it is impossible to refuse to receive the invitation to the trial. This service was first promoted in the spring of last year and ensures through an electronic system the recording of the moment the call is sent. The system allows the storage of these data and then their access by the administration of the courts through the online page where this service is designed in the Albanian post office. With this possibility, the summoning of witnesses is ensured, removing the possibility for them to refuse to receive the notification.
Delays in court hearings are a persistent problem of Albanian courts. Since 2004 and thereafter, every year more than 2,000 cases are not completed within the year when they started out of about 8,000 such cases (statistical year 2005-2011). More than 10 percent of these cases take more than a year and many more than six months.
If an analysis of the dynamics of criminal cases is made for the eight years 2004-2011, it is found that the number of cases registered in the courts has increased in parallel with the number of unfinished cases. Comparing the year 2004 with the year 2011, it is found that the increase in the volume of cases goes to 21%, while the increase in unfinished cases goes to 16.3%. (Published in Panorama national daily newspaper)
