Compliance and enforcement aspects (horizontal provisions of all directives)

• Author: Biljana Kotevska
• Pages: 65-71

65

11 Compliance and enforcement aspects (horizontal provisions of all

directives)

11.1 General (legal) context

11.1.1 Surveys and reports about the particular difficulties related to obtaining legal

redress

Issues of accessibility of legal redress have been discussed in rep orts. These found issues

with physical accessibility of courts,160 financial a ccessibility of courts, 161 and issues with

acquiring legal aid.162 The findings are included in Section 11.3 on access to courts, below.

Because of the low transparency and documentation of discriminati on cases before the

courts, it is di fficult to follow the degree of reporting. The counting of the cases can be

done on the basis of requests for access to public information, thus the results are

contingent on the response rate and on the diligence of the docum entation of the cases.

Some attempts to document the number of cases have been made. A 2016 regional study

of anti-discrimination law found that , by December 2015, 47 cases of discrimination had

been filed to the courts with civil procedure competences, only one case on one of the

articles on discrimination from the Criminal Code, and no misdemeanour cases.163 A

national study of labour relations discrimination and harassment in five primary court areas

in the period 2014-2016 found that there h ad been labour law discrimination and

harassment cases in only one of the courts – the one based in the capital city.164 The

number of filed cases was 53, out of which 18 are discrimination cases, 32 are harassment

cases, and 3 are labour disputes related to discrimination of a female worker. Although the

study is for the period 2014-2016, all of these cas es were filed in 2016. The authors

presume that the impetus for these cases mig ht have been the May 2016 case in which a

court found for the first time discrimination in the case of a pregnan t woman.

Research on the right to fair tri al in domestic violence cases published in 2019 f ound that

every third woman is a victim of domestic violence. However, these cases rarely reach the

courts, mainly because of distru st in the judicial system.165 An earlier study presented an

overview of the gender-related cases brought before the courts in the year 2015. It found

that women were the potential victims in 445 criminal cases filed to the competent courts

in the year 20 15.166 Out of these, 252 cases were on physical injury inflicted in domestic

160 Coalition ‘All for Fair Trials’ (2018),      - з  

          ( Policy brief – Legal,

financial and physical access to courts of first instance), available at: http://all4fairtrials.org.mk/wp-

content/uploads/2019/01/CEP-PG02-CAFT-Policy-Brief-on-courts-accessibility-1.pdf.

161 Association for Emancipation, Solidarity and Equality of Women (2018), Cost benefit analysis of provision of

the three existing free legal aid and services in Republic of Macedonia, available at:

http://www.esem.org.mk/en/pdf/Publikacii/2018/Cost%20Benefit%20Analisys.pdf.; Conevska, I. and

Kamberi, I. (2018), Regulatory impact assessment – Law on Courts, European Policy Institute – Skopje,

available at: http://www.merc.org.mk/Files/Write/Documents/04812/mk/PVR-Zakon-za-sudovi-MK.pdf.

162 Association for Emancipation, Solidarity and Equality of Women (2018), Cost benefit analysis of provision of

the three existing free legal aid and services in Republic of Macedonia, available at:

http://www.esem.org.mk/en/pdf/Publikacii/2018/Cost%20Benefit%20Analisys.pdf.

163 Kola-Tafaj, F. et al (2016), Legal protection against discrimination in South East Europe Regional Study,

Centre for SEEL, available at: http://www.seelawschool.org/pdf/Book-Legal-Protection-Against-

Discrimination-SEE.pdf

164 Association for Emancipation, Solidarity and Equality of Women (2017), Overview of court cases related to

violations of labour rights, with a focus of discrimination and harassment in the workplace, available at:

http://www.esem.org.mk/en/pdf/Publikacii/2017/Overview%20of%20court%20cases.pdf.

165 Coalition ‘All for fair trials’ гнлмфдз A       

        нлмф  (Analysis of the data from monitored

court proceedings of domestic and gender-based violence in 2019).

166 Trenchevska, J. et al (2016),      -  (Access to justice for women –

analysis), Association for Equal Opportunities ‘Equal Access’з available at: http://civicamobilitas.mk/wp-

content/uploads/2018/03/ANALIZA-PDF-MK.pdf.