The Constitutional Court of Kosovo is expected to give rulings on three laws which have been approved by the government and the Assembly of Kosovo for several months.

The laws have been contested by the opposition Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, and the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, which have sent them to the Court for interpretation.

The PDK sent the Law on the State Bureau for Confiscation of Unjustifiable Assets and the Law on Public Officials for constitutional evaluation.

Meanwhile, the PDK and LDK separately sent the Law on the Prosecutorial Council to the Court.

The action of the opposition parties has been criticised by Prime Minister Albin Kurti as “desperate”.

Kurti said that in 15 years, no one remembered so many laws being contested in such a short time.

“Their protest is a desperate attempt to paralyze reforms, it is an opposition to the civic need and the will of February 14, 2021. Our march will not stop,” Kurti told the government meeting on Wednesday.

On February 9, the Assembly of Kosovo approved the Law on the State Bureau for the Verification and Confiscation of Unjustified Assets.

With approval of this law, a mechanism for the confiscation of unjustifiable assets was created without the need for a criminal file that has ended with a sentence from a court.

All public officials in Kosovo will now be subject to asset verification, if there are suspicions that assets were acquired illegally.

On Tuesday, the PDK announced that it had sent the law to the Constitutional Court for constitutional evaluation.

“We are convinced that the government will receive a strong lesson from the Constitutional Court, canceling this law in its entirety, declaring it invalid and unconstitutional in relation to many constitutional segments, especially the constitutional guarantees of human rights,” a lawyer for the PDK parliamentary group, Faton Fetahu, told BIRN.

“This draft law amnesties criminals, because if someone has acquired unjustifiable wealth, he will be amnestied from criminal responsibility,” Fetahu said earlier. 

On December 30, the PDK contested the Law on Public Officials. The party has sought a review of the constitutionality of four articles of this law.

The coordinator of the Department of Justice in the PDK, Perparim Gruda, said that their request addresses a series of violations of the Constitution related to the human rights of public officials.

“Specifically, we are dealing with Article 19 of the Constitution, which states that ratified international agreements take precedence over the laws of Kosovo. In this case, the agreement on Stabilization and Association is an agreement ratified by a two-thirds vote in the Assembly and is above the [national] laws, and I think that we should not enter into a controversy with the Office of the European Union,” said Gruda.

The Law on Public Officials aims to regulate the work relationship of public officials in the institutions of Kosovo. It defines rules and principles that regulate the acceptance, classification of positions, change, termination of the work relationship, rights and obligations in relation with the work relationship, as well as other issues related to the work relationship of public officials in state institutions.

The European Union has said that the law is problematic.

“The new law on public officials is problematic in terms of ensuring a merit-based civil service that can effectively manage human resources, as it adds excessive freedom to the procedures of recruitment, transfer and discipline of civil servants, making the service civilian potentially vulnerable to politicization,” the EU’s public response said.

The EU has also said that the law was adopted without authorities considering their comments.

The Law on the Prosecution Council of Kosovo has also ended up in the Constitutional Court, sent by the PDK and LDK separately. The two parties have said that the law allows political interference in the justice system.

The head of the PDK, Abelard Tahiri, said that the law violates the independence of the prosecutorial system.

“With the new law, the Prosecution Council cannot have a quorum, nor decision-making in the election of the leaders of high positions, the chief state prosecutor, the prosecutors of the basic prosecutions and the chief prosecutor of the Special Prosecution, without the participation of political people, in this case the majority in the Assembly. This is unacceptable,” he told reporters. 

LDK MP Armend Zemaj expressed the same attitude.

“Interferences in the Prosecution Council and the justice system in a political way are not healthy for a democracy, but also for the independence of the judiciary which [should work…] democratically and without interference and without what we call institutional capture of this important institution,” he said.

On the other hand, the Minister of Justice, Albulena Haxhiu said the law paves the way for major reforms in the justice system.

“I thank the deputies of the Assembly […] for the approval in the second reading of the draft law for the Prosecutorial Council of Kosovo. The approval of this draft law paves the way for major reforms in the justice system,” Haxhiu wrote on Facebook on June 23, 2022, when the law was approved in the Assembly.

There is no legally defined time limit for the Constitutional Court as to when it should publish rulings on laws that have been sent to it for interpretation.

PM Kurti’s ruling Lëvizja Vetëvendosje has a majority of seats in the Assembly, after winning 51 per cent of the citizens’ votes in the elections of February 14, 2021.