Fourth seminar on constitutional complaints held in Korça, Albania
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- Published: December 5, 2019

Launched last year, the series of seminars in Albania on constitutional complaints continued on 4 and 5 December 2019. Having held the first three seminars in Tirana and Durrës in the centre of the country, the IRZ organised the fourth seminar in partnership with the Bar Association of Albania in the southern Albanian city of Korça. The background for these seminars is the amendment of the constitution in 2016 and the associated right of citizens to be able to go directly to the Constitutional Court with individual complaints.
The basis for the seminar was the IRZ publication, “Constitutional complaints – a handbook for practitioners from the German and Albanian points of view” issued in 2017, which was written by the speaker at the seminar, Professor Dr. Jan Bergmann, President of the Senate at the Administrative Court of Baden-Württemberg, and his co-author, Dr. Arta Vorpsi, a scientific officer of the Constitutional Court.
On the first day of the seminar, Prof. Bergmann talked about the European human rights dogmatics and test schemes for rights to freedom and fundamental rights, as well as the fundamental right to equality On the following day, he explained to the 19 lawyers attending the event the conditions of admissibility of constitutional complaints in Germany, noted a few of the specific problems associated with this and closed the seminar with a lecture on the current case law of the European Court of Human Rights.
Even though the Constitutional Court of Albania is currently not quorate, Prof. Bergmann encouraged the lawyers to submit suitable cases to help with the continuous further development of the Albanian legal system. He recommended that they refer not only to the Albanian constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights in the complaints, but in view of future EU membership, they should also cite the EU Charter.
Now that the IRZ has covered the subject of constitutional complaints in the middle of the country and in the south-east, a continuation of the series of seminars in Shkodra, the main city in the north of the country, is being considered.