10.3. Timeliness of civil justice services
Delays in solving legal issues can have several implications – costs, productivity, health, employment and relationships – and could deter citizens from following legal procedures to resolve their disputes in the future. The responsiveness of the justice system ensures that the “right” mix of services are provided to the “right” clients, in the “right” areas of law, in the “right” locations and at the “right” time.
There are several factors that can hinder timeliness of dispute resolutions such as a shortage of judges and other relevant professionals, lack of court rooms for hearings, limited use of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, and other issues related to a lack of funds. In addition to material barriers, inflexibility in justice systems (which do not allow for reallocation of cases), ineffective procedural rules (e.g. which do not allow prosecuting witnesses who refuse to testify), ineffective allocation of resources and low use of ICTs also affect case management.
Assessments conducted by SIGMA in 2017 across the region found inadequate electronic case management systems for administrative court cases in Kosovo and Albania. In Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo the ability of the administrative courts to ensure timely delivery of justice is further undermined by the low number of legal assistants supporting the judges in resolving disputes. They also show DTs are artificially low compared to EU countries, due to the “ping-pong” of cases between different court instances. Similar observations are made by the Council of Europe for several countries in the Western Balkan region.
For litigious civil and commercial cases, the disposition time (DT) in first instance courts was the longest in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where it took an estimated 574 days to solve a case on average, compared to just 159 days in Albania. Both in Albania and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the number of days to solve a case has been reduced since 2012, by 33 and 82 days respectively. The number of days to solve litigious civil and commercial cases has increased in Montenegro (13 days), North Macedonia (48 days) and Serbia (73 days) since 2012.
DT for first instance administrative cases is above a year for North Macedonia (370 days) and over two years for Kosovo (788 days) in 2016. Albania reported the shortest disposition time, 115 days. DT has been shortened in Albania by more than half, from 287 days to 115 days since 2012. However, in all other Western Balkans (no data is available for Kosovo) DT for first instance administrative cases increased in the same period. North Macedonia had the largest increase, of 53 days, from 317 in 2012 to 370 days in 2016.
The European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) database reports the evaluation of judiciary systems over time. The latest available year is 2016.
Length of proceedings indicates the estimated time needed to solve a case, which implies the time taken by a first instance court to reach a decision. This is expressed as the disposition time (DT). It is calculated by dividing the number of pending cases in a given year by the number of cases that were solved the same period, multiplied by 365. Although it does not provide information on the average time needed to solve a case, it does provide an estimate of the length of the process within a specific jurisdiction. Litigious civil and commercial cases refer to disputes between parties, such as litigious divorces. Commercial cases are addressed by dedicated courts in some countries and by civil courts in others. Administrative cases refer to disputes between citizens and local, regional or national authorities. While specialised courts deal with these types of disputes in some countries, civil courts hear them in others; hence, the DT can vary.
Countries differ in the ways they administer justice and distribute responsibilities between courts so cross-country comparisons must be taken with caution. There are differences in the types of courts and cases included in this exercise, as well as different methods of data collection and categorisation.
Further reading
CEPEJ (2018), European Judicial Systems: Efficiency and Quality of Justice, Council of Europe, Strasbourg.
European Network of Councils for the Judiciary (2011), Timeliness Report 2010-11, ENCJ, Brussels.
OECD (2019), Equal Access to Justice for Inclusive Growth: Putting People at the Centre, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/597f5b7f-en.
Koprić I., Kovač P., Ðulabić, V., Džinić, J. (2016), Legal remedies in Administrative Procedures in Western Balkans: Comparative Study, ReSPA - Regional School of Public Administration, Danilovgrad.
Figure notes
Data are ranked in ascending order regarding the time needed in days on the latest year when data was available.
10.7.: Data for Kosovo are not available.
10.8.: The figure representing Kosovo’s DT data for first instance administrative cases refers to data from the OECD SIGMA Kosovo Monitoring report 2017 (http://sigmaweb.org/publications/Monitoring-Report-2017-Kosovo.pdf).
Source: Council of Europe European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) (database), 2016.
Source: Council of Europe European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) (database), 2016.
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