The Albanian Ministry of Justice and the High Judicial Council have presented a proposal for a new judicial map for Albania that foresees significant reduction in the number of courts around the country.
On Tuesday, the two institutions published a draft of their proposal which would decrease the number of first instance courts from 29 to 12.
According to the plan, there would be only two administrative courts in Tirana and Lushnje, down from the current six.
Another major change put forward by the proposal is the creation of a single Appeals Court based in Tirana. There are currently six appeals court in the entire country.
This judicial redistricting seeks to rectify the court backlog and the absence of active judges resulting from the country’s ongoing judicial reform.
Half of the judges and prosecutors who have gone through the judicial vetting process have been dismissed, causing significant vacancies in delays in Albanian courts.
During the presentation, head of KLGJ Naureda Llagami said that, under the current map, each first instance judge is assigned an average of 640 cases a year, while the number for appeals judges is close to three thousand.
