No progress. In two words, the European Commission, in its latest progress report, presented on November 4, summed up the country’s success in judicial reforms.
Last year, the country was deemed by the Commission to have made limited progress. This year, not even that.
However, the Commission not only sees no progress, but warns that the government and parliament are interfering with and putting pressure on the judiciary.
The report mentions no one by name. But one of those who is most vocal in criticising the judiciary is North Macedonia’s centre-right Prime Minister, Hristijan Mickoski. One of his latest such statements was about the recent verdict in the so-called “Oncology” case in which the court issued a probation sentence for one of the doctors who had admitted misuses.
On October 23, Mickoski said the verdict made him nauseous, because “with such decisions, judges and prosecutors do not even deserve their current salaries, let alone higher ones”.
The Prime Minister, like any citizen, may have a view on whether a certain decision is fair. But a sense of justice is just a feeling, while the law is a system of norms. It is not for him to say that he is not satisfied with a court sentence.
Besides, reforms in the judiciary are not measured by the emotional reactions of the PM but in courtrooms, where the government has only to provide the elementary conditions for the administration of justice.
But the government and the ruling party do not think so.