All appointments of judges and prosecutors in BiH blocked, HJPC will have to repeat all open competitions

(Patria) - All appointments of judges and prosecutors in BiH have been blocked. More precisely, the HJPC will have to repeat all competitions that have been opened so far and have not been completed as of today.

The reason for this is yesterday's ruling of the Administrative Council of the Court of BiH, which annulled certain provisions of the HJPC's Rules of Procedure. The request for a legality assessment was submitted by legal expert and director of the FBiH Center for Judicial and Prosecutorial Training, Arben Murtezić. In his request, he claims that, due to two provisions of the Rules of Procedure, judges and prosecutors are discriminated against when applying for new positions compared to lawyers, notaries, and other legal professionals who do not hold judicial functions, reports Oslobođenje

These are the provisions of Article 49, paragraph 5, points b) and c). In the mentioned point b), it is stated that, regardless of expertise, a candidate who has applied for a position will not be invited for an interview if:

- they hold a judicial function and have spent less than five years in the position from which they are applying, counting up to the deadline for submitting applications,

while point c) states that a candidate will not be invited for an interview if:

- they are a court president or chief prosecutor and have applied for a vacant position during the term of their first mandate to which they were appointed.

The HJPC first proposed that Murtezić's request be dismissed as untimely, but when this did not "succeed," they sought to have it declared unfounded. However, the panel consisting of Željka Krmek, Efraim Čosić, and Maid Bikić accepted Murtezić's argumentation and declared the aforementioned provisions illegal. They were annulled as of the date of the ruling, i.e., as of yesterday.

The scale of the task ahead for the HJPC is illustrated by the fact that, with a single call from January this year, a competition was announced for more than 80 positions in BiH's judicial institutions. Annulling and restarting all competitions that have been announced so far and have not been completed will require additional time.