The transitory period and the creation of new judiciary institutions have extended significantly beyond the timelines foreseen by the amendments to the Constitution, Governance Law and the Status Law.
This was the conclusion of a EURALIUS report concerning the period between June 2017 and February 2018.
The report stressed that important institutions like the High Prosecutorial Council (KLP), the High Judicial Council (KLGj), and the Judicial Appointments Council (KED) have yet to be created, as candidates looking to sit on these councils are still in the process of being reassessed.
As Exit explained before, as a result of the slow pace with which the government passed a number of laws and bylaws regulating the new institutions and the vetting process and the current pace with which the vetting institutions are operating, the creation of new institutions seems still distant and unlikely to take place before the summer.
This delay, more than 18 months later than the deadlines provided by the Constitution, has also caused the current paralysis of several other institutions, that await the creation of KLGj and KLP.
Currently, the judiciary system is basically in a legal and institutional vacuum where a limbo in which the Constitutional Court is paralyzed, with only one of its members having passed the vetting so far, whereas the High Court has been left with less than half of its judges, resulting in further delays for more than 24 thousand files.
According to EURALIUS’s own predictions, the creation of three new judiciary institutions, the High Prosecutorial Council (KLP), the High Judicial Council (KLGj), and the Council of Judicial Nominations (KED) will take place at the end of 2018.
Whereas the vetting process for every member of the judiciary system is supposed to be complete within three years, that is, in 2021, right on time for the next parliamentary elections.
For as long as KLP, KLGj, and KED remain non-existent, the complete non-functioning of the Constitutional Court, the paralyzed state of the High Court, and the illegality of the prosecutorial system will persist.
