Place and Application of International Law in the Albanian Legal System
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015
Siniša Rodin and Tamara Perišin (eds.)Judicial Application of International Law in Southeast Europe10.1007/978-3-662-46384-0_6The Place and Application of International Law in the Albanian Legal System
(1)
Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, University of Oslo, 6706, St. Olavs plass, 0130 Oslo, Norway
(2)
Legal Officer, Supreme Court of Albania, Rruga “Ibrahim Rugova”, Tirana, Albania
1 Introduction
This chapter aims to explore and analyse the place of international law in the Albanian legal system and its application by Albanian courts. First, the chapter addresses the status of international law under the 1998 Albanian Constitution and its interaction with other sources of law within the Albanian legal system. Subsequently, a number of important domestic cases are analysed so as to illustrate the approach taken by Albanian courts towards international law. The chapter focuses on issues concerning the place and application of human rights, European law, and international criminal law and related mechanisms in the Albanian legal system.
2 The Place of International Law in the Albanian Legal System
The place of international law in the Albanian legal system is regulated in some detail by the Albanian Constitution,1 the supreme law of the land.2 Article 5 of the Constitution stipulates that ‘the Republic of Albania applies international law that is binding upon it’.3 Albanian scholars have debated the exact scope of the term ‘international law’. Some of them have opted for a narrow interpretation of the provision, claiming that it should be read in conjunction with other provisions regulating the incorporation of treaties in internal legislation. Others have opposed this view. They state correctly that the term ‘international law’ does not refer only to such treaties that may be in force between Albania and other subjects of international law, but must also include other sources of international law such as customary international law and general principles of law.4 While at first sight, Article 5 appears to have only declaratory effects, it in fact functions as a singular and necessary link between two legal systems: international law (and Albania as a subject of it) on the one hand, and Albania’s internal legislation (and international law when it becomes an integral part of it) on the other. Based on the pacta sunt servanda principle, this provision is the basis upon which international law enjoys a special status in Albania’s internal legislation.
Part seven of the Constitution deals specifically with normative acts and international agreements. Under Article 116(1), ratified international agreements are listed immediately after the Constitution and below laws.5 Although not explicitly mentioned in the text of the Constitution, scholars have always maintained that such an order of precedence constitutes a formal hierarchy of the sources of law in Albanian legislation for two main reasons.6 First, Article 4 establishes the undisputed position of the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. Secondly, according to Article 122(2) ‘an international agreement that has been ratified by law has superiority over laws of the country that are not compatible with it’.
It must be noted, however, that Article 116 mentions only ‘ratified international agreements’, whereas Article 122(2) grants hierarchical status only to those international agreements ‘ratified by law’. This may raise doubts as to whether the framers of the Constitution intentionally added the qualifier ‘by law’ in Article 122(2) or whether the omission in Article 116 was simply a drafting error. Such doubts are further reinforced by the Law on the Conclusion of Treaties and International Agreements, which in Article 2(b) stipulates that ratification means the ‘act by which the Parliament or the President of the Republic gives the final approval to a treaty signed on behalf of the Republic of Albania’.7 The article indicates two institutions authorised to ratify international agreements, by way of law or decree respectively. The answer to this doubt lies not in the framers’ intention but is, in fact, simply technical.
Although still in force, the Law on the Conclusion of Treaties and International Agreements is not based on the current Constitution, but on the previous temporary constitutional arrangement under the Law on the Main Constitutional Provisions.8 Article 28(10) of these previous constitutional provisions provided that the President of the Republic could also, in addition to the Parliament, ratify or denounce international treaties; the power being limited to only those which did not fall under the competence of the Parliament. However, such a prerogative has now been removed from the President’s competences. Under the current Constitution, the President may only ‘conclude’ international agreements.9 Therefore, it may be implied that, for the purposes of Albanian domestic legislation, ‘ratification of an international agreement’ means the act by which only the Parliament gives the final approval to a treaty signed on behalf of the Republic of Albania.10
In line with other European Constitutions,11 the Albanian Constitution provides that ratification is mandatory for political treaties, such as those involving territory, peace, alliances, the military, freedoms and liberties, participation in international organisations or those involving the financial contribution of the state.12 However, the list is not exhaustive, since the Parliament still retains discretionary power to ratify other international agreements which do not involve the abovementioned topics, but are still considered important enough to require decision-making by the Parliament.13
The process of ratification by the Parliament is done by law, and serves a double purpose. First, it vests the treaty with the force and solemnity of an act approved by the representatives of the people. Second, it directly incorporates it into internal legislation. A ratified international agreement becomes part of the domestic legal system after its publication in the Official Gazette.14 It is implemented directly, except for cases when it is not self-executing and its implementation requires passing new legislation.15 As mentioned earlier, ratified international agreements are—owing to the pacta sunt servanda principle basis of Article 5 of the Constitution—hierarchically superior to other internal legislation and take precedence in the case of conflict.16
A further question raised and which is considered problematic is the status of other sources of international law, such as customary international law vis-à-vis conflicting internal legislation. Would Article 122(2) of the Constitution be applicable mutatis mutandis to also include customary international law obligations? This issue is not merely theoretical, as there are huge practical implications with regard to the application of customary international law rules by domestic Albanian courts.17 Admittedly, a strictly textual interpretation of Article 122(2) does not support an assertion that customary international law or general principles of law are not only part of the Albanian legal system, but also prevail over domestic law. Moreover, the unique property of customary international law as a set of non-codified rules could hardly be reconciled with the requirement of formal ‘publication in the Official Gazette’. Nevertheless, such a narrow interpretation of Article 122(2) would be ill-construed and ill-advised. It would place Albania in an awkward position, considering that ‘all national legal systems … accept customary international law as an integral part of national law’.18 Likewise, Albania’s international legal responsibility for violations of customary international law and general principles of international law can and actually has been engaged.19 Finally, such a restrictive interpretation would also run against the wording and scope of Article 5 of the Constitution, which clearly provides for the application of international law (and not only conventional obligations) that is binding upon Albania. Unless there are exceptional grounds for arguing the applicability of the persistent objector doctrine, and only with regard to specific rules of customary international law, there is no justifiable reason why Article 5 of the Constitution should not also include customary international law and general principles of law.
3 The Application of International Law in the Albanian Legal System
The Albanian Constitutional Court (ACC or Constitutional Court) and the Albanian High Court, the highest courts in Albania, have dealt with cases involving the application of international law in Albanian domestic law. By analysing a number of relevant cases, we shall illustrate the relationship and interaction between Albanian domestic law and international legal obligations undertaken by Albania over the last 22 years, since the fall of the communist regime in 1991. Although the Albanian Constitutional Court is not formally part of the Albanian judiciary, under the Constitution it has been invested with a leading role in determining the compatibility of Albanian laws with international legal agreements to which Albania is a party. Thus, according to Article 131, the Constitutional Court has jurisdiction to decide, among other matters, on questions relating to: (1) the compatibility of laws with the Constitution or with ratified international agreements20; (2) the compatibility of international agreements with the Constitution, prior to their ratification21; and (3) complaints from individuals regarding the violation of their constitutional rights to due process of law, after all legal means for the protection of those rights have been exhausted.22
3.1 The Compatibility of Albanian Laws with Ratified International Agreements
No cases have been filed thus far seizing the Constitutional Court with questions relating to (potential) conflicts between national laws and ratified international agreements. Taking into consideration the lack of any objective data or statistics, one may only speculate as to the reasons behind the lack of case law on this issue. This situation may well relate to the limited place given to the study of international law in the training of national judges and prosecutors23; the paucity of publications featuring important international agreements ratified by Albania in the Albanian language24; or simply no serious conflict has been identified so far in legal practice.
Some Albanian constitutional scholars have gone as far as to question the authority of the Constitutional Court to pronounce on potential conflicts between laws and ratified international treaties. They argue that in the case that national judges encounter any such conflict, they should simply apply the superior norm, i.e. the international treaty, since the issue pertains to normal judicial interpretation, and not to the ambit of the Constitutional Court’s jurisdiction.25 They further claim that only if the national law conflicts with the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), should the judge instead refer the case to the Constitutional Court. They justify this difference of treatment with the ‘constitutional status’ that the ECHR enjoys on the basis of Article 17 of the Constitution. Dealing with impermissible limitations of rights and freedoms accorded by the Constitution, paragraph 2 of Article 17 provides that:
These limitations may not infringe the essence of the rights and freedoms and in no case may exceed the limitations provided for in the European Convention on Human Rights.
What Article 17(2) provides is the actual ‘reference’ but not ‘incorporation’ of parts of the ECHR into the Albanian Constitution. Its purpose is to impose an absolute prohibition so that certain fundamental rights cannot, even in situations of war or public emergency, be derogated from. In this sense, the provision of Article 17(2) mentioning the ‘limitations provided for in the ECHR’ is a renvoi to Article 15(2) of the ECHR which reads:
No derogation from article 2 [right to life], except in respect of deaths resulting from lawful acts of war, or from articles 3 [prohibition of torture], 4 (paragraph 1) [prohibition of slavery] and 7 [no punishment without law] shall be made under this provision (emphasis added).
Thus, Article 17(2) of the Constitution in effect provides a second layer of protection from torture, slavery, punishment without law, or arbitrary deprivation of life. The result of this reference is that, for the purpose of Albanian legislation, these parts of the ECHR also become an integral part of the Constitution. Therefore, when the Constitutional Court is asked to pronounce with regard to challenges to a law which allegedly exceeds the limitations imposed by Article 15(2) of the ECHR, the Court will act on the basis of its jurisdiction to decide on the ‘compatibility of the law with the Albanian Constitution’. On the contrary, if the law conflicts with other parts of the ECHR, it may still be brought before the Constitutional Court, but this time on the basis of the Court’s jurisdiction to decide on the ‘compatibility of laws with international agreements’.26 The wording of Article 131 of the Constitution is clear in providing that the Constitutional Court may decide on the compatibility of the laws not only with the Constitution, but also with ‘international agreements, as provided in Article 122’.
3.2 Compatibility of International Agreements with the Constitution
Article 131(b) of the Constitution provides that the Constitutional Court is competent to decide ‘on the compatibility of international agreements with the Constitution before their ratification’. The choice to allow this constitutional review of international treaties is beneficial from both a theoretical and practical perspective. Theoretically, this upholds the hierarchy of the sources of law under Article 116 of the Constitution. The state is thus free to conclude any international agreement and to undertake any kind of international law obligations, as long as they do not come into conflict with the Constitution. This does not necessarily mean that the Constitution is considered as standing above international law. The wording of Article 5 of the Constitution which affirms that ‘the Republic of Albania applies international law that is binding upon it’ displays a fairly deferential stance towards international law. Through this provision Albania recognises its international legal obligations vis-à-vis the international community of states, while at the same time reaffirming its sovereignty in deciding how it incorporates such obligations within its own domestic legal system. The practical aspect of this approach involves avoiding a situation of conflict between the Constitution and an international obligation which could result in violation of the pacta sunt servanda principle.
The Constitutional Court has been asked twice to pronounce with regard to the compatibility of international agreements with the Constitution prior to their ratification. The first case was heard in 2002, when the Council of Ministers asked the Court whether the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was compatible with the Constitution.27 While on that occasion the Court found no obstacle in clearing the way for the ratification of the ICC Statute by the Albanian Parliament, in the second case the issue was more complex. The Constitutional Court had to decide on the constitutionality of an agreement between Albania and Greece concerning the delimitation of their respective continental shelf areas and other maritime zones to which they are entitled under international law (Maritime Delimitation Agreement).28 In its judgment, the Constitutional Court found that the agreement: (1) was negotiated without the conferral of full powers by the President of the Republic; (2) that, contrary to its title, the agreement in fact delimited internal and territorial waters; (3) that it disregarded basic rules of international law on maritime delimitation in order to reach a fair and equitable result; and that (4) it failed to recognise certain islands as constituting special circumstances for the purpose of maritime delimitation. As a result, the Court struck down the agreement as unconstitutional. Although the decision of the Constitutional Court might have been controversial from a political perspective, it did not entail any breach of international obligations by the Albanian state, since such an agreement would need to be ratified by the Albanian Parliament so as to enter into force.
4 The Impact of the European Court of Human Rights in the Albanian Legal System
It is almost impossible to find any judgment of the Constitutional Court where the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has not been cited at least once. Indeed, all Albanian courts, and the Constitutional Court in particular, have in the past decade given considerable attention to the ECtHR’s case law. An attentive observer would note that even the structure of some of the Constitutional Court’s judgments follows that of the ECtHR, with long citations of applicable law first, followed by the parties’ submissions, and finally with the Court’s assessment. Most of the time, the proceedings before the Constitutional Court have served as an effective filter before lodging an application with the ECtHR.
4.1 The Right to a Fair Trial: Xheraj v. Albania
The re-examination or reopening of criminal proceedings following a judgment of the ECtHR finding that the ECHR has been violated is certainly not a novel issue among member states of the Council of Europe.29 Since 2000, the Council of Ministers of the Council of Europe has issued a recommendation to member states urging them:
to ensure that there exist at national level adequate possibilities to achieve, as far as possible, restitutio in integrum … in particular, to examine their national legal systems with a view to ensuring that there exist adequate possibilities of re-examination of the case.30
By 2006, a majority of 34 member states provided for the possibility of reopening criminal proceedings.31 In seven states, reopening was still considered as impossible or unclear.32 Albania was one of them. In 2008, Albania introduced new legislation to allow for the reopening of civil cases following a judgment of the ECtHR.33 The reopening of criminal cases remains impossible, at least according to the Code of Criminal Procedure. While the Albanian government has been working on a draft amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure for this purpose,34 the Albanian Constitutional Court and the High Court seem to have already accepted this possibility. After the Barberá, Messegué and Jarabo case,35 the Xheraj case officially became the second time36 a Constitutional Court had ever directed other courts to reopen criminal proceedings following a judgment of the ECtHR, despite the absence of such a provision in the Code of Criminal Procedure.37
The facts of the case can be summarised as follows: accused of murder, Mr. Xheraj was found guilty by the Durrës District Court in 1996 and sentenced to life imprisonment. On appeal, Xheraj’s sentence was reduced to 20 years of imprisonment. In 1997, his conviction became res judicata after the High Court confirmed the Appeals Court’s judgment. A year later, on 14 December 1998, the Durrës District Court accepted a request from Xheraj to reopen proceedings. In the light of new evidence, the District Court then dropped all charges and acquitted Xheraj. As the prosecution failed to lodge any appeal within the proscribed limit of 10 days, the judgment of acquittal became res judicata on 24 December 1998. On 9 October 1999, the prosecution filed and obtained a request for leave to appeal out of time. Following the new proceedings in the District and Appeals Court, the judgment of acquittal was again confirmed. The prosecution thus appealed to the High Court, which in turn sent the case back to the Appeals Court for retrial. On 18 December 2000, the Appeals Court re-confirmed its judgment of acquittal. The prosecution lodged another appeal with the High Court. On 20 June 2001, the High Court accepted the prosecution’s appeal and quashed the judgment of acquittal, therefore confirming the previous guilty verdict of 20 years of imprisonment. As this judgment was final, Xheraj lodged an application with the Constitutional Court claiming violation of his constitutional right to a fair trial. After the ACC rejected his claim, he subsequently lodged an application with the ECtHR which, in turn, found an infringement of the principle of legal certainty, and consequently a violation of Article 6(1) of the Convention.38 While the ECtHR did not order any non-pecuniary remedies in its dispositif, it still considered:
that the most appropriate form of redress for this continuing situation would be for the applicant’s final acquittal of 14 December 1998 to be confirmed by the authorities and his conviction in breach of the Convention to be erased with effect from that date.39
Based on this passage, Xheraj seized the ACC again, seeking the annulment of the High Court’s judgment of 20 June 2001 and the enforcement of the ECtHR’s judgment. In his application, he claimed the existence of a legal vacuum in Albanian legislation, since Albanian courts did not consider the ECtHR’s judgments as directly enforceable. In its decision of 9 March 2010, while rejecting Xheraj’s application, the Constitutional Court noted that as Article 46 ECHR obliges states to abide by the ECtHR’s final judgments, they [the states] were under an obligation to take all necessary measures to ensure the effective implementation of such judgments. The ACC stressed the importance of reopening criminal proceedings in implementing the ECtHR’s judgments as a possible tool towards achieving an effective restitutio in integrum of the infringed right protected by the Convention.40 It deplored the fact that the legislature had not yet amended the Code of Criminal Procedure with a provision similar to Article 494(2)(ë) of the Code of Civil Procedure, but added that the High Court, as the authority responsible for the breach of the Convention, must find a solution to the issue; even by way of analogy to the Code of Civil Procedure if it so deemed necessary.41
Xheraj then turned to the High Court, which on 9 July 2010 rejected his request to reopen proceedings, arguing that Article 450 of the Code of Criminal Procedure did not foresee final judgments of the ECtHR per se as grounds for reopening proceedings.42 While paragraph 1(a) of Article 450 provided that reopening of proceedings may be accepted when the facts on the merits are contradicted by another final judgment, this was—according to the High Court—not the case here, since the ECtHR’s judgment could only serve as circumstantial evidence for constitutional proceedings, but not as a basis for reopening criminal proceedings. Xheraj did not agree and reverted back to the Constitutional Court. On this occasion, the ACC made plain its disagreement with the High Court. The Constitutional Court first stated that:
With regard to fundamental human rights, the ECtHR enjoys, in our legal system, an exclusive competence. This competence has been accepted by our internal legal system by virtue of Articles 17(2)43 and 122 of the Constitution, which mandate that the ECtHR’s judgments be directly implemented … The Parliament is under an obligation to take such measures as to ensure compliance with the ECHR’s dispositions. If it fails to do so, domestic courts must remedy this legal vacuum, and directly apply the ECtHR’s judgments in accordance with Articles 122 of the Constitution and Articles 19 and 46 of the ECHR.44
Indeed, Article 122 of the Constitution provides for the direct application of the ECHR in the Albanian legal system. In addition, according to Article 46(1) of the ECHR, member states ‘undertake to abide by the final judgment of the Court in any case to which they are parties’. It should be noted, however, that the remedies of the ECtHR are binding only when they are phrased in a mandatory manner and included in the dispositif.45 In Xheraj, the ECtHR ordered the payment of pecuniary damages, but only recommended that confirming the judgment of acquittal would be ‘the most appropriate form of redress’.46 This is because states enjoy a certain margin of appreciation as to how to enforce the obligation present in Article 46 of the Convention.47 The ECtHR itself has already noted that ‘the Convention does not give it jurisdiction to direct a state to open a new trial or to quash a conviction’ and that ‘it cannot find a state to be in breach of the Convention on account of its failure to take either of these courses of action when faced with the execution of one of its judgments’.48 Thus, contrary to the Constitutional Court’s assertion, domestic courts are not obliged to act, and are not to be blamed if no legal remedy is available in their legal system to enforce the ECtHR’s judgments.49
It should be noted that the ACC has only annulment powers.50 The court can only strike down a law as unconstitutional, but it cannot declare it unconstitutional because it does not include a right or a liberty protected by the Constitution. For that reason, the ACC could not act like the Italian Constitutional Court, which only 2 months before had struck down Article 630 of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure in the part where it did not provide other grounds for reopening criminal proceedings, ‘when that is necessary … to conform to a final judgment of the ECtHR’.51 This is probably why the ACC decided to interpret Article 450(1)(a) of the Code of Criminal Procedure as widely as possible, so as to include the ECtHR’s judgments. This was done by relying on Article 122 of the Constitution and Article 10 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (which deals with relationships with foreign authorities) in rejecting the High Court’s interpretation that the ECtHR’s judgments could not be equivalent to those of Albanian courts. Thus, according to the Constitutional Court’s interpretation, the ‘final judgments’ referred to by Article 450(1)(a) do not only include judgments from Albanian courts, but also foreign ones (and thus those of the ECtHR). Finally, the Constitutional Court warned the High Court that:
If the [Constitutional] Court has established that certain Constitutional rights have been infringed, as it did in its judgment No. 22, dated 09.03.2010, this fact cannot be further reviewed by anyone, especially the High Court, which is obliged to guarantee the correct application of the substantial and procedural criminal law from all courts, in accordance with the Constitution and the judgments of the Constitutional Court. Accordingly, in case of a conflict between two different judgments of the Constitutional and the High Court, there is only one solution, which is the quashing of the High Court’s judgment by the Constitutional Court.52
However, the Constitutional Court did not deal with a crucial element of Article 450(1)(a) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which clearly provides that a reopening of proceedings may by granted only when ‘the facts on the merits conflict with those of another judgment which is final’. Even accepting that an ECtHR judgment may be considered ‘another judgment which has become final’ for the purposes of Article 450(1)(a), it is still hard to accept that an ECtHR judgment is decided on other ‘facts’ which contradict a previous judgment. The ECtHR is certainly not a trier of new facts and does not decide on the guilt or innocence of a defendant, but only reviews the judgments of domestic courts vis-à-vis the rights and liberties guaranteed by the Convention. This approach is further confirmed by the well-established jurisprudence of Italian courts, which have always agreed that Article 630 of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure—a verbatim of Article 450 of the Albanian Code of Criminal Procedure—is not applicable to ECtHR judgments.53 It appears that the High Court was correct when it first denied the applicability of Article 450(1)(a) of the Code of Criminal Procedure to final judgments of the ECtHR.54 Finally though, it had to succumb to the decision of the Constitutional Court.55
The eagerness of Albanian courts to follow the ECtHR’s jurisprudence and their commitment to human rights issues is understandable. However, this cannot be achieved at the expense of sacrificing other important constitutional principles, namely the rule of law and the separation of powers. True, after the ECtHR’s judgment in the Xheraj case, Albania might have been in a continuing breach of the Convention, but it is not for the judiciary to remedy to this legal vacuum by implicitly assuming competences which the Constitution attributes exclusively to the legislative branch.
5 Jurisdictional Immunities for International Organisations: The Chemonics Case
This case concerned an employment dispute between an individual and a company claiming immunity before Albanian courts.56 The defendant, Chemonics International Inc., was the Albanian branch of Chemonics International Inc., an homonymous company based in Delaware, USA, which had won a contract with USAID, a US government agency, regarding the implementation of a project concerning the reform of the public administration in Albania. The plaintiff, a former employee of Chemonics, brought a civil suit before the Tirana District Court seeking compensation for unlawful dismissal. Chemonics challenged the jurisdiction of the Tirana District Court, claiming that on the basis of an international agreement between the Albanian and US Governments, it enjoyed immunity from civil liability before Albanian courts.
In 1992, the Albanian and the US Governments had entered into a bilateral economic agreement concerning US economic, technical and related assistance to Albania.57 The agreement purported to set forth a
framework concerning economic, technical and related assistance which, based on a request by the Government of the Republic of Albania, may be provided by the Government of the United States of America, subject to the applicable laws and regulations of the United States of America.58
It consisted of four articles, two of which provided for extensive privileges and immunities for different categories of US employees and contractors. Chemonics relied on paragraph 3(d) of the agreement, which provided that:
In order to assure the maximum benefits to the people of the Republic of Albania from the assistance to be furnished hereunder and except as may be agreed by the two governments: …
(d) Individuals, public or private organizations, and employees of public or private organizations, under contract with or financed by the Government of the United States of America, who are present in the Republic of Albania to perform work in connection with this agreement, shall be immune from all civil liability directly related to the performance of such work (emphasis added).
Ratione personae, the provision accorded immunity to virtually everyone,59 as long as one was (1) present on Albanian territory and (2) had a contract with or was financed by the US Government to perform work in connection with the agreement. And since the agreement did not define what kind of work, it could well include any kind of ‘economic, technical and related assistance’ to the Albanian Government. Ratione materiae, it limited the immunity to all civil liability, but only if the activity was directly related to the performance of work connected to the agreement.
In its decision on jurisdiction, the Tirana District Court accepted that the defendant was included in the category of subjects listed in paragraph 3(d). However, it held that disputes arising from an employment dispute between Chemonics and one of its employees did not fall into the category of activities directly related to the performance of work connected to the agreement. Moreover, the District Court observed that in the employment contract itself the parties had specifically provided for the Tirana District Court’s jurisdiction in case of disputes which could not be settled amicably.
Chemonics appealed the decision before the High Court. Considering the complexity of the issue, the Civil Law Chamber of the High Court referred the case to the United Chambers (the full court), asking the following questions:
Do Albanian courts retain jurisdiction with regard to disputes between Albanian citizens and other subjects which enjoy immunity from Albanian jurisdiction (by virtue of the UN Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of Specialised Agencies or bilateral agreements between Albania and foreign states) if such disputes are employment related?
If an employment contract between the abovementioned subjects provides for the jurisdiction of Albanian courts, would this be considered a voluntary waiver in accordance with Article 39(a) of the Code of Civil Procedure?60