By Boldnews.al
The Council of Judicial Appointments (CED) has sent the Presidency names of candidates to the Constitutional Court, all with legal problems, at the same time confirming two concerns raised three years ago by the Venice Commission – insufficient number of applicants for a variety of new institutions and lack of qualification of candidates.
Following the official announcement by the Justice Appointments Council, the President of the Republic now has 30 days to elect members of the Constitutional Court among the names: Arta Vorpsi, Elsa Toska, Besnik Muçi and Regleta Panajoti.
These names, with a slight addition, are the same ones that have applied for 3 vacancies in the Constitutional Court nominated by the President and for 3 others nominated by the Assembly, testifying to the lack of human potential.
This absurd situation was foreseen by the Venice Commission in February 2016, when it submitted to the Albanian authorities a Final Report on Constitutional Amendments.
Lack of candidates
The Venice Commission, summoned by the Special Justice Reform Commission, in its final report of 26 February 2016, writes: “Concerns about the complexity of the system relate mostly to purely practical considerations: the creation of these bodies will require recruitment from a pool of potential candidates, which may not be sufficient. ”
In the same report, the European Commission states that it has received assurances from the Albanian authorities that there are a sufficient number of persons in our country for the appointment of new institutions.
This “promise” of the Albanian authorities turns out to be excessive and this is evident not only among the candidates for the Constitutional Court, but also among the members of the new institutions, some of whom do not meet the criteria to be appointed to the positions they currently hold. .
However, standing in the vacancies for the Constitutional Court, it is found that the number of applicants who, for the Council of Justice Appointments, meet the formal criteria for membership, is minimal.
The Justice Appointments Council has qualified 5 names for 6 vacancies. The law, meanwhile, requires at least 3 candidates for each vacancy. So, in total, the number of candidates selected by the Justice Appointments Council, at this stage, should be at least 18.
But the process of evaluating the applicants, of which about 40 in total, was limited to just 5 names, thereby reinforcing the suspicions raised by the Venice Commission of lack of candidates.
Lack of qualification
The Venice Commission, in the same report of February 2016, also raised concerns about “qualifying candidates”. At this point, the Venice experts wrote that “… during the visit to Tirana the rapporteurs made sure that in Albania there were a sufficient number of persons qualified to fill these places in order for the new system to function.”
The names in the race for the Constitutional Court prove quite the opposite of what the Albanian authorities have promised.
The Justice Appointments Council sent to the Presidency the names of the candidates Vorpsi, Toska, Muçi and Panajoti, each with a problematic set of formal legal criteria and professional integrity.
Boldnews.al has previously reported that candidates Arta Vorpsi and Elsa Toska, currently two legal advisers to the Constitutional Court, failed to pass the Magistrates’ School test, which was the same as used for admission young students.
Meanwhile, two other names, Tirana’s Judge Regleta Panajoti and Serious Crimes Prosecutor Besnik Muçi, still have accounts open with Vetting before the Special Appeals Panel.
