Pristina Judicial Council Fails to Rule on Serb Judges
The Judicial Council in Pristina did not vote on Serb judges' request to withdraw their 2022 resignations and return to work, after three members left the room and broke the quorum.
- On July 24, Pristina's Judicial Council did not even proceed to a vote on the return of Serb judges from northern Kosovo.
- The decision fell through because three members walked out of the room and broke the quorum.
- Earlier that week the same institution dismissed Serb prosecutors, so pressure on the Serb judiciary in the north remains unresolved.
- The EU Office in Pristina called for no pressure to be placed on council members.
On July 24, the Judicial Council in Pristina did not rule on the request by Serb judges from northern Kosovo to withdraw the resignations they submitted in 2022 and to return to work at the court in Kosovska Mitrovica. No vote was ever held, because three council members left the room and broke the quorum, Pristina media reported in Albanian.
The decision was thus postponed indefinitely, and the Serb judges remain outside the judicial system in which they worked before they, together with thousands of other Serb-community employees, walked out of Kosovo’s institutions in the autumn of 2022. Their request to return is formally still on the table, but without a vote there is no binding decision.
Aljbulena Hadziju, acting head of the judicial institutions, called on council members to reject the Serb judges’ request. Her message was not an isolated one. A few days earlier the same official signed the dismissal of the Serb prosecutors, after the Prosecutorial Council turned down almost identical requests from that part of the judiciary. The sequence of moves points clearly in one direction: the return of Serb judicial staff to the north is meeting systematic resistance from Pristina.
Why is the judges’ return blocked again?
The answer lies in a mix of politics and procedural tactics. A quorum is not broken by accident. When three members leave the room right before a vote, the message is that the decision is unwelcome, yet no one wants to formally vote against it either, since that would carry a political cost in front of international observers.
The European Union Office in Pristina responded by calling on all political actors to refrain from pressuring the Judicial Council during its deliberations. The appeal from Brussels is not naive. It acknowledges that pressure exists and that the decision on the Serb judges is not being taken in a vacuum, but in an atmosphere in which judicial bodies are increasingly hard to distinguish from day-to-day politics.
For the Serb community in the north this is not an abstract question. The court in Kosovska Mitrovica is an institution that directly shapes daily life, from property disputes to criminal proceedings. Without judges who speak the language and know the community, trust in the judiciary erodes further.
What comes after the broken quorum?
The Judicial Council can schedule a new session and try once more to reach a vote, but nothing guarantees the quorum will hold this time. If the scenario repeats, the blockade could become a permanent state of affairs rather than a one-off incident.
Belgrade treats the return of Serb judges and prosecutors as part of the broader question of how institutions function in the north and of the implementation of obligations agreed earlier in the dialogue. Pristina, for its part, insists on its own judicial procedures and on the reading that Serb judicial workers left the system of their own accord.
Between those two positions stand people who walked out of the courtrooms in Kosovska Mitrovica nearly three years ago and are now waiting for a decision that is postponed from session to session. Will the Judicial Council in Pristina allow a vote at all, or will a broken quorum remain the easiest way to avoid taking responsibility?
