60 years of the Constitutional Court

Former President of the Regional Court, Winfried Schubert, during his presentation.
Former President of the Regional Court, Winfried Schubert, during his presentation.
North Macedonia

The Constitutional Court of the Republic of North Macedonia celebrated its 60th anniversary on 15 March 2024 with an OSCE-supported international conference on ‘Freedom of expression and the press’. Due to the good and long-standing cooperation with IRZ, our organisation was involved in the programme with two expert presentations.

The President of the Constitutional Court, Dobrila Kacarska, opened the conference, which was followed by words of welcome from high-ranking guests, such as the President of the Republic, Stevo Pendarovski, the Speaker of Parliament, Jovan Mitreski, the President of the Government, Talat Xhafri, the Minister of Justice, Krenar Loga, the OSCE Head of Mission, Kilian Wahl, the EU delegation, Ben Nupau, and the ambassadors of the USA, Angela Price, and Germany, Petra Drexler.

This was followed by two panels moderated by the former judge at the ECHR, Margarita Tsatsa-Nikolovska. In this context, the international speakers presented the case law of the various national constitutional courts and the European Court of Human Rights on the topic of ‘freedom of expression and freedom of the press’.

IRZ expert Winfried Schubert, former President of the Constitutional Court of Saxony-Anhalt, presented future constitutional challenges in the area of freedom of expression and freedom of the press in the areas of ‘hate speech’, ‘fake news’ and ‘artificial intelligence’. Mladen Cadikovski, President of the Association of Journalists of North Macedonia (AJM), presented the media's perspective. In addition, IRZ head of section, lawyer Dr Stefan Pürner, responsible for North Macedonia, presented the Lüth ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court in Macedonian, emphasising that this decision also made many critical contributions to the social debate possible in the first place.

Further information and impressions of the anniversary event.