Constitutional Court

Applicants filed referrals against 16 individual judgments of the Supreme Court, which annulled decisions of the Municipal Court and the District Court in Prishtina, on allowing monetary compensation by the Kosovo Energy Corporation (KEK) on behalf of their pension rights, The applicants alleged that the right to fair and impartial trial and the right to property were violated, The Court found as partially admissible the referral of one of the applicants who had already reached the age of 65, and was entitled to pension from the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, Therefore, the Court decided to review his referral for the period before he reached such age, On the other hand, in reviewing admissibility of referrals of other applicants, the Court, referring to its earlier judgment in the case “Imer Ibrahimi and 48 former employees of the Kosovo Energy Corporation versus 49 individual judgments of the Supreme Court of Kosovo, and to case law of the European Court of Human Rights, considered that the legal deadline of four months would not be taken into account, since the case in hand was a “continuing situation”, which would exclude the legal deadlines for filing referrals, On these grounds, the Court found referrals of fifteen other applicants to be admissible, In reviewing merits, similar to earlier cases, the Court decided that property rights of applicants were violated by termination of contracts they had signed with KEK, without fulfilling conditions of termination provided by the contract, respectively before establishment and operationalization of the Pension and Invalidity Insurance Fund, Furthermore, the Court also decided that there was a violation of the right to fair and impartial trial, as guaranteed by the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights, considering that the Supreme Court had neglected an important argument, the non-existence of the Pension and Invalidity Insurance Fund, in reaching its decisions