Court Fees Still Hamper Albanian Access to Justice

Tirana district court | Photo by : AP

In spite of a Constitutional Court ruling – which confirmed that, based on Albanian and international law, judges have the right to forfeit the payment before trial of court fees for plaintiffs who cannot afford them – few Albanian judges implement it in practice.

Dorian Matlija, a human-rights lawyer with the ResPublica legal aid center in Tirana, says that the judges have ruled in their favour in only in 20-30 per cent of the cases where the centre has asked for postponement of the payment of legal fees.

“The judges not only are unclear about the possibility of delaying payment of trial fees, which is based on Albanian law and the European Convention of Human Rights, but are also unwilling [to do so],” Matllija told Balkan Insight.

According to Matlija, many judges fear that if they exclude plaintiffs from legal fees the High State Auditing Office will rule them in breach of the law.

Although the Ministry of Justice has slashed court fees to initiate a civil lawsuit from 12,000 lek (€86) to only 3000 lek (€22), plaintiffs still face hefty costs for expert fees that range from 70,000 lek (€498) to 100,000 lek (€713) per expert.

In case they seek damages, they have to pay 1 per cent of the claim in advance, which is out of reach for many Albanians, particularly in cases of wrongful death.

According to the World Bank 12.4 per cent of Albanians live in extreme poverty on less than $2 per day.

In 2012 Respublica asked the Constitutional Court to exclude completely the payment of the court stamp before trial.

Although the court rejected the lawsuit, it pointed to its ruling issued on February 27, 2013, which underlined that first-instance trial judges may forgo payment of the court stamp based on existing legislation.

According to Matlija, Albania’s legal aid law, passed in 2008, also allows the plaintiff to appeal to a special commission in the justice ministry to forgo payment of legal fees.

 However, no such commission has been set up yet because the ministry has yet to approve the legal guidelines for its existence.