VACANCY IN THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT AFTER THE VETTING PROCESS AND PROBLEMATICS OF ITS MEMBERS’ ELECTION

Abstract

The vetting process and the political tension in Albania in recent months, changed not only the normal relations between constitutional institutions, but also their institutional view. The problems that the transitional reassessment process of judges and prosecutors brought to the Albanian justice system, reached considerable dimensions, until the collapse of the most important chain-parts of the judicial system. The Albanian state became the protagonist of an unprecedented situation that culminates in the non-functioning of the Constitutional Court, the only one that can possibly respond to and resolve the political-institutional standoff that has been increasing in recent months on the shoulders of a fragile democracy. Initial delays in the functioning of the vetting institutions, in the establishment of new justice institutions, the vacancy in the High Court which inevitably consequences in the vacancy in the Constitutional Court; all these aspects, significantly reflected on the normal functioning of existing institutions. Today, there is an urgent need for a return to the envisioned and promised identity of the justice system, and the thoroughfare seems to be still a long one.