One of the rights safeguarded by the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina and European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms is the right which encompasses the right to the enforcement of lawful and final court decisions and decisions of the public authorities.
According to the explicit constitutional provisions and Rules of the Constitutional Court, the decisions of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina are final and binding.
The Constitutional Court has been considered Information (Report) on the Enforcement of its Decisions once a year, sometimes even more frequently since 2005.
The Constitutional Court took more than 26 000 decisions wherein it resolved more than 52 000 cases from its establishment in accordance with the applicable Constitution (1998).
At the session held on 26 October 2016, the Constitutional Court considered the Report on the Enforcement of its Decisions with a particular attention paid to the period April 2015 - March 2016.
The Constitutional Court established that in the period from 2005 to the date when that session was held it took 95 rulings wherein it established that its decisions were not enforced within the given time limit. These are: 12 rulings related to the request for review of constitutionality and 82 rulings falling within the scope of appellate jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court. Following the adoption of the rulings on the failure to enforce decisions and after the expiry of the time limit given for the enforcement, 81 decisions of the Constitutional Court were enforced, out of which 7 decisions were related to the request for review of constitutionality and 74 decisions falling within the scope of the appellate jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court.
Accordingly, the Constitutional Court concluded that out of a total number of 94 rulings, wherein the Constitutional Court established that certain decisions were not enforced, thirteen (13) decisions were not enforced as at 26 October 2016, out of which 5 decisions related to the request for review of constitutionality and 8 decisions falling under the appellate jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The non-enforced decisions of the Constitutional Court that were taken upon requests for review of constitutionality relate to the obligations of the legislative authorities: Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina (3); Parliament of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1) and National Assembly/Council of Peoples of the Republika Srpska (1).
The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina has no other instruments for enforcement of its decisions except the referral of the rulings on the failure to enforce decisions to the relevant prosecutor’s office, since the failure to enforce the decisions of the Constitutional Court constitutes an offence. The Constitutional Court acted in compliance with its rules in all cases without exception, regardless of the authority or institution which failed to enforce the decision.
It follows from the case-file of each individual case that the relevant prosecutor’s office conducted or conducts an investigation for failure to enforce decisions in 83 cases (8 related to the request for review of constitutionality and 75 related to the decisions falling under the appellate jurisdiction). In some cases the proceedings were concluded with prosecutorial decisions, and in other cases the proceeding are still pending.
The Constitutional Court invites all those who finds it necessary to present information on non-enforced decisions of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina to use genuine information and to interpret it in accordance with the relevant former and present statistics.
