Constitutional Court

KI148/19, Applicant: Muharrem Rama, constitutional review of Decision  Rev. No. 123/2019 of the Supreme Court of Kosovo, of 8 May 2019 

KI148/19, Resolution on inadmissibility of 16 January 2020, published on 19 February 2020 

Keywords: Individual referral, right to a fair trial, resolution on inadmissibility 

The Applicant sued the Government of the Republic of Serbia for the damage he sustained during the 1998/1999 events in Kosovo. The regular courts were declared incompetent courts to decide on the lawsuit in question.

In this respect, the Applicant submitted the Referral to the Court alleging that the regular courts have erroneously applied the substantive law when they decided on their jurisdiction.

Accordingly, he alleged before the Court that such court decisions violated his rights guaranteed by Article 21 [General Principles], Article 22 [Direct Applicability of International Agreements and Instruments], Article 31 [Right to Fair and Impartial Trial], Article 53 [Interpretation of Human Rights Provisions], and Article 54 [Judicial Protection of Rights] of the Constitution of the Republic of Kosovo, as well as Article 6 (Right to a fair trial) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Having examined the Applicant’s Referral and the decision of the courts, the Court found that the application of the law was not disputable in the proceedings of the case before the Basic Court and the Court of Appeals, because precisely in accordance with the legal provision of Article 18.1 of the LCP, it is the obligation of the courts that throughout the entire proceedings take care of their jurisdiction to decide on the subject matter.

Therefore, having regard to all the foregoing, the Court emphasized that the Applicant’s allegations regarding the application of the law were considered and explained by the regular courts, and that from the entirety of the proceedings, it does not follow that the regular courts acted in an arbitrary manner, or interpreted, and consequently applied the law in an arbitrary manner.

Therefore, the Court declared the Applicant’s Referral as manifestly ill-founded on constitutional basis and rejected it in accordance with Rule 39 (2) of the Rules of Procedure.