In 2017 the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council in Bosnia and Herzegovina was the subject of a series of European Union commissioned Peer Reviews that assessed progress against reforms of the justice system. One of the Peer Reviews addressed deficiencies in the judicial appointments process which was assessed as lacking transparency, objectivity, was heavily politicised, susceptible to corruption and incapable of assessing candidates for senior managerial positions. The appointment of a new State Chief Prosecutor was imminent and Agencia project team members were asked to design a new process that would meet the recommendations of the Peer Review and ensure that the most qualified and capable candidate was appointed.
Over a period of 12 months, members of the project worked with a small team of Council members to design a completely new judicial appointments process capable of being operated locally and able to improve public and international donor confidence in the integrity of the appointments system. This included defining the skills, qualities and abilities required to be an effective judge or prosecutor which were then transformed into a competency framework.
To test these competencies over 500 questions were written and a new assessment and scoring system that increased the transparency of decision making was produced.
The High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council adopted the regulations to enable the new appointments process to be used for the appointment of the Chief State Prosecutor. We delivered training to all Council members and a new Chief State Prosecutor was appointed using the new process. The EU accepted that the new process met their requirements and the recommendations in the Peer Review.
The Agencia team received praise from the EU delegation and other international donors.
