In the cases of Ilievska and Zdraveva v. North Macedonia and Ribarev v. North Macedonia the Court held that there had been a violation of the right to access to a court.

The applicants are former judges. They were dismissed from office with final effect by the State Judicial Council (“the SJC”) after Appeal Panels set up within the Supreme Court specifically to hear appeals by them, quashed initial decisions by the SJC for their dismissal and remitted the cases for fresh consideration.

Under the State Judicial Council Act, no appeal may be lodged against an SJC decision adopted after the remittal of a case. The applicants’ subsequent appeals were not assessed on the merits.

The Court found that since there was no possibility for a subsequent review of the SJC’s decisions taken after remittal, neither the Appeal Panel nor any other judicial body could assess whether the SJC had, in fact, adequately responded to the findings of the Appeal Panel in each of the applicants’ cases and therefore the Appeal Panels’ inability to ascertain whether the SJC had complied with instructions given by it when remitting the applicants’ cases had restricted the applicants’ right of access to a court to such an extent that the very essence of that right had been impaired.

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