For more than a decade, Chris Thompson has been one of the most influential international figures working inside Kosovo’s commercial justice system. As Chief of Party for USAID’s flagship Commercial Justice Activity—and previously the Contract Law Enforcement (CLE) program—he played a central role in establishing the Commercial Court, professionalizing judgment enforcement, expanding mediation and arbitration, and strengthening the legal foundations of Kosovo’s investment climate.
With more than twenty years of experience across post-conflict and transitional environments—from Sierra Leone to Ukraine and Afghanistan—Thompson brings a rare combination of comparative perspective and institutional memory. His work in Kosovo spans the full arc of reform: from early post-war efforts to build basic financial and legal institutions, to the more recent challenge of consolidating reforms amid political pressure, public skepticism, and donor withdrawal.
In this conversation with The Kosovo Dispatch, Thompson speaks candidly about what has improved, what continues to resist reform, and what risks stagnation now that international programs are winding down. He addresses the Commercial Court’s early performance and structural constraints, persistent enforcement blind spots, the limits of alternative dispute resolution, and the quiet but consequential impact of political interference on investor confidence. Above all, he argues that Kosovo’s next decade will not be defined by new laws or institutions—but by whether existing ones are protected, resourced, and allowed to function without fear or favor.
By The Kosovo Dispatch | Prishtina Bureau - 23 December 2025
Long Arc of USAID Engagement
Since you have led two major USAID programs over more than a decade, how would you describe the evolution of Kosovo’s commercial justice system from your first arrival to today?
Thompson: USAID has made a substantial, long-term investment in Kosovo, marking twenty-five years of engagement just last year. I have been fortunate to participate in some of that work over time, including two major commercial justice reform programs, the Contract Law Enforcement (CLE) program, which ran from 2013 to 2018, and the Commercial Justice Activity (CJA) program, which ran from 2019 until the beginning of 2025.
My involvement in the region began in the late 1990s, after several years in private commercial practice in the United States. I relocated to Eastern Europe to work as a development lawyer supporting transitional economies in building modern commercial legal systems, largely through USAID-funded initiatives. My first work in Kosovo dates back to 2000, when I supported early efforts to develop the Banking and Payments Authority, which later became the Central Bank. Over the following years, I returned periodically, including work on public–private partnership planning in 2012–2013. From 2016 until early 2025, I led two of the three major USAID commercial law reform programs implemented in Kosovo since 2009.
Taken together, those programs reflect the evolution of Kosovo’s commercial justice system over time. Early efforts focused on foundational problems—most notably, the inability to enforce contracts and court judgments. Initial reforms concentrated on judgment enforcement and alternative dispute resolution, laying the groundwork for the creation of a private enforcement profession and introducing arbitration and mediation as viable alternatives to lengthy court proceedings. These mechanisms offered businesses a way to resolve disputes more efficiently, but they required sustained investment to become durable.
Subsequent reforms shifted from design to implementation. The CLE program supported establishment of private enforcement agents, which changed the incentive structure around judgment enforcement, while parallel work helped modernize commercial legislation, including the adoption of a contemporary bankruptcy framework. During this period, attention also turned to improving how commercial cases were handled within the courts themselves, with early efforts to streamline case management and expand the use of mediation to relieve growing backlogs.
The reforms supported by the CJA program focused on institutional consolidation and sustainability. This included the creation of a stand-alone Commercial Court to handle business disputes nationwide, continued professionalization and automation of the enforcement system, and deeper integration of mediation into court practice. These efforts reflected a system that had moved beyond basic legal infrastructure toward improving consistency, efficiency, and trust.
The trajectory from my first arrival to today shows a commercial justice system that is far more structured and specialized than it was two decades ago. Progress has not been linear, and challenges remain, but the shift from ad hoc solutions toward dedicated institutions and professionalized processes marks a significant evolution in Kosovo’s commercial legal environment.
Commercial Court: Successes and Realities
The Commercial Court is widely regarded as a milestone reform. In your view, what measurable impacts has it produced, and where do you still see structural weaknesses?
Thompson: The Commercial Court reform was one of the flagship justice-sector reforms supported by USAID and strongly driven by Kosovo’s business community. Businesses consistently advocated for a specialized court as a necessary step to improve the country’s commercial climate, and they were closely consulted during the drafting of the legislation that ultimately established the court. The law granted the court jurisdiction over all commercial disputes and business-related administrative cases, explicitly including enforcement of both domestic and foreign arbitral awards.
In response to calls from the private sector for a “single window” for resolving business disputes, the reform consolidated both trial and appellate functions within the same court. The court’s structure also included a dedicated legal support unit to assist judges in managing complex commercial cases more effectively. The law was passed in early 2022, and the Commercial Court of Kosovo became operational by August of that year.
From the outset, however, the new court faced significant structural challenges. It has not yet been staffed with the number of judges and support personnel required by law, and its temporary location within a single floor of the Prishtina Basic Court is inadequate in consideration of its broad mandate and case levels. Compounding these constraints, the court inherited an initial backlog of nearly 10,000 cases transferred from courts across the country—far more than originally anticipated.
Despite these limitations, the court’s early performance has been notable. By early 2023, it achieved its first sustained monthly positive case-resolution rate, meaning it was resolving more cases than it was receiving. This marked a meaningful improvement over the pre-reform situation and provided early, measurable evidence that specialization and consolidation were beginning to yield results.
At the same time, the reform has not been without setbacks. In 2024, legislation was adopted to establish a separate Administrative Court of Kosovo, which would remove business-related administrative cases from the Commercial Court’s jurisdiction. That legislation was developed without meaningful inclusion of the business community in the early drafting process and effectively dismantles the “single-window” feature that was central to the original reform. Going forward, commercial litigants will again have to navigate multiple courts, depending on whether their dispute is classified as administrative or purely commercial, even as the Commercial Court retains both trial and appellate jurisdiction over the latter. The legislation to establish the Administrative Court has been challenged, principally for procedural reasons, and remains pending before Kosovo’s Constitutional Court.
So, in sum, the Commercial Court has already demonstrated tangible gains in efficiency and case handling under difficult conditions. Its remaining weaknesses are less about the concept of specialization itself and more about resourcing, institutional coherence, and policy consistency. Without sustained commitment to those elements, even well-designed reforms risk falling short of their full potential.
Corruption and Perception Gaps
Your corruption-perception studies with AmCham revealed persistent distrust in institutions. What were businesses telling you privately that they might not express publicly?
Thompson: This is where I risk giving a somewhat wonky answer. AmCham’s annual corruption-perception surveys, conducted between 2018 and 2022, were an important and illuminating effort to capture how businesses in Kosovo viewed corruption and institutional inefficiency. I would encourage readers to consult them directly on AmCham’s website.
Our project had the opportunity to collaborate with AmCham over several years in producing these surveys, with a particular focus on business perceptions of judicial institutions. The final survey, conducted in 2022 and publicly presented in 2023, showed that 46 percent of surveyed businesses considered corruption to be “very critical.” This represented a significant improvement compared to 2020, when more than 76 percent had reported corruption as “very critical.” Similarly, the share of businesses reporting that they had actually encountered corruption declined from 40 percent in 2020 to just over 36 percent in 2022.
At the same time, it is important to note that in every survey year, nearly one-third of respondents chose not to disclose whether they had encountered corruption at all. So, even in anonymous surveys, corruption remained a sensitive subject for many businesses, suggesting that the reported figures may understate the problem.
From our project’s perspective, trust in the judiciary was a central concern. We believe that effective justice depends on public confidence in judicial institutions. Here, too, the data showed gradual improvement: in 2018, only 2 percent of surveyed businesses reported trusting the judiciary, rising to nearly 11 percent by 2021, the last year for which the question was asked in AmCham’s survey. In a separate survey that our project conducted in late 2024, preliminary results were showing that about 15 percent of respondents expressed “high” or “very high” trust in judicial institutions. Unfortunately, our program was discontinued before these results could be fully validated and published.
While the trust figures remain low, the upward trend is notable and likely reflects the impact of sustained international support for Kosovo’s judiciary, particularly from USAID. With that support now discontinued, it will be important to see whether these gains can be maintained — or whether trust begins to erode again.
Enforcement Blind Spots
Judgment enforcement has long been Kosovo’s Achilles’ heel. Why has this remained so difficult, and what practical steps could realistically change the enforcement culture?
Thompson: When civil judgments cannot be effectively enforced, confidence in the judicial system erodes quickly. If a successful litigant cannot collect on an award, the incentive to use the courts at all is fundamentally undermined.
This recognition drove earlier reform efforts supported by USAID, which focused on professionalizing judgment enforcement by creating a private enforcement profession, following similar reforms across the region. A law establishing this profession was adopted in 2013.
Before this reform, judgment enforcement was handled by state-salaried enforcement judges. That system proved deeply ineffective: hundreds of thousands of civil judgments accumulated without enforcement, and parties had little ability to advance their cases. Enforcement was slow, opaque, and largely beyond the control of judgment creditors.
The introduction of private enforcement agents fundamentally changed the incentive structure. These agents contract directly with parties and are financially motivated to pursue enforcement, including through performance-based “efficiency fees” tied to actual collections. The profession became operational in 2014, and by 2024 there were approximately 40 private enforcement agents nationwide. Through this system, hundreds of millions of euros have been collected, significantly reducing the enforcement backlog and earning strong support from Kosovo’s banking sector.
At the same time, new challenges emerged. Creditors increasingly reported that judgment debtors were able to stall enforcement by filing objections in the courts to individual enforcement actions. In many cases, courts were slow to schedule hearings on these objections—or failed to do so altogether—effectively freezing enforcement once again. Addressing this problem was one of the major drivers behind the creation of the Commercial Court of Kosovo, as enforcement objections are now centralized in the Commercial Court rather than dispersed among basic courts nationwide. A substantial portion of the court’s inherited caseload consisted of long-delayed enforcement objections, and the court has made handling these cases one of its priorities.
In parallel, our project supported the digitalization of the enforcement system. Working with the Ministry of Justice and the enforcement profession, we helped design and build the Enforcement Management System, which automates enforcement procedures, supervisory and disciplinary processes, and data collection. This automation is critical for changing enforcement culture: it reduces opportunities for corruption by minimizing face-to-face interactions and, for the first time, creates a durable digital record of enforcement actions and collections.
The system was scheduled to become operational in January 2025. Because this coincided with the pause and subsequent discontinuation of USAID-supported programs, I cannot say with certainty how implementation has unfolded this year. I do know, however, that the system has an effective and committed advocate in the profession’s self-governing body, the Chamber of Private Enforcement Agents.
Despite these advances, judgment enforcement in Kosovo has faced some challenges. The Commercial Court has encountered high-profile clashes involving enforcement against state interests, resulting in allegations against the court being aired in the media but not pursued through judicial channels. In some of these enforcement cases, enforcement agents have been summarily suspended or de-licensed by the Ministry of Justice. The court has remained strong, but such actions can have a chilling effect on enforcement, particularly where state interests are implicated.
Ultimately, changing enforcement culture requires more than new laws or institutions. It depends on consistent procedural discipline by courts, political restraint when enforcement affects public actors, and institutional protection for enforcement agents who are acting lawfully. Without those elements, even well-designed reforms risk being undermined in practice.
ADR and Arbitration
You’ve consistently advocated for arbitration and mediation. What is preventing Kosovo’s private sector from embracing ADR at scale—lack of trust, lack of legal literacy, or something deeper?
Thompson: From the outside, the advantages of arbitration and mediation—speed, lower cost, and greater predictability—would seem to outweigh the burden of litigating in court for years. Yet most disputing parties still choose to do exactly that. Kosovo has two established arbitration tribunals, one at the American Chamber of Commerce in Kosovo and one at the Kosovo Chamber of Commerce. Both are capable of providing effective arbitration services, yet despite sustained outreach and promotion, they handle only a handful of cases each year. Mediation has been embedded in Kosovo’s legal framework since 2008, but only a small percentage of court cases are resolved through mediation.
In my experience, the primary barrier is not the quality of ADR institutions or the legal framework, but the mindset of disputing parties. ADR depends on a minimum willingness to cooperate, and that willingness is often in short supply once a dispute has escalated. There is also a deeply rooted perception—common in many legal systems—that only a state-run court can deliver a “real” or legitimate resolution. That belief persists even when courts are slow, overburdened, or unpredictable, and it presents a structural obstacle to broader adoption of ADR.
For that reason, our support programs focused not only on raising awareness of the benefits of arbitration and mediation, but also on embedding ADR more firmly into the dispute-resolution ecosystem. This included supporting legislation that requires referral of certain categories of cases, as well as strengthening institutional mechanisms to identify and channel appropriate disputes into mediation. Kosovo’s court system proved to be a reliable partner in this effort. Courts adopted a referral protocol and staffed mediation clerks in most courts and branches, tasked with identifying suitable cases, referring them to mediation, and following up with parties.
These measures produced tangible results. With support from our most recent program, the number of mediated cases increased from just a few thousand in 2019 to more than 15,000 in one year. That growth suggests that when ADR is normalized within court processes—rather than treated as a purely voluntary alternative—parties are far more willing to engage.
While important progress has been made, systemic obstacles remain. For example, certain judicial evaluation standards still appear to create counter-incentives for judges to refer cases to mediation, even where it would clearly serve the interests of the parties and the court system. Addressing these misalignments will be essential if ADR is to become a routine part of dispute resolution rather than an exception. Continued institutional attention and targeted support—particularly around court practices and professional capacity—will be critical to consolidating recent gains and ensuring that mediation and arbitration are used consistently and sustainably over time.
Political Interference and Institutional Independence
Many reforms fail not because of weak laws but because of political pressure. During your years in Kosovo, did you observe patterns of political interference in commercial-justice institutions?
Thompson: As I noted earlier, many development reforms—including those in commercial justice—inevitably run up against entrenched institutional interests and political priorities. That tension can make reform work particularly challenging, especially where changes are intended to strengthen independence and limit discretion. Over many years, international donors have invested heavily in building the professional capacity and formal independence of Kosovo’s justice institutions, precisely because public trust depends on that independence being both real and visible.
As a relatively young democracy, Kosovo continues to face challenges in fully insulating its justice system from pressure. Some of these challenges have played out publicly in recent months. For example, the recent dismissal of the Acting Chief Prosecutor by the Kosovo Prosecutorial Council prompted unusually strong expressions of concern from the United States and the European Union and was followed by the rapid annulment of that decision by the Supreme Court of Kosovo. More broadly, the fact that the position of Chief Prosecutor has remained filled in an acting capacity for several years points to unresolved governance vulnerabilities within the system.
Within the judicial branch, similar pressure points are visible. The Commercial Court has been significantly under-resourced relative to its mandate, has faced intense public criticism in cases involving state interests, and has had to navigate overlapping reform initiatives—such as the parallel establishment of an Administrative Court—during its formative period. None of these factors is fatal on its own, but together they complicate the court’s ability to consolidate authority and public confidence.
As a whole, these developments could raise legitimate concerns about the resilience and independence of Kosovo’s justice institutions, including those responsible for commercial disputes. For investors, independence is not an abstract principle but a practical one: it determines whether contracts will be enforced consistently, whether outcomes can be predicted, and whether legal risk can be priced with confidence. Kosovo has shown that it can identify shortcomings and respond to scrutiny, but sustaining that credibility will require continued institutional protection for courts and prosecutors when politically sensitive cases arise. Maintaining visible judicial independence is therefore not only a rule-of-law imperative, but a prerequisite for long-term investment and economic stability.
Investment Climate
Kosovo’s leaders frequently speak about attracting foreign investment. From your perspective, what are the top three institutional weaknesses that directly discourage investors?
Thompson: From my earliest days in international development, I have seen how profoundly a country’s investment climate shapes long-term quality of life. Kosovo is no exception. In the early stages of development, it is entirely rational to prioritize security, health, poverty reduction, and community empowerment. But once a transitional economy begins to perform reasonably well in those areas, living standards increasingly depend on the strength of the private sector and its ability to integrate into international markets. In that context, attracting reliable and strategic foreign investment becomes a central driver of stability and growth. In short, Kosovo’s investment environment has an outsized impact on quality of life.
The most fundamental constraint on Kosovo’s investment environment remains the absence of universal international recognition. Continued non-recognition by several states, including five EU member states, creates legal and regulatory uncertainty that some investors are unwilling or unable to absorb. While normalization and dialogue processes are shaped by broader geopolitical dynamics beyond Kosovo’s control, sustained engagement and incremental progress remain important signals to international markets that political and legal risks are being actively managed and reduced over time.
A second weakness lies in the commercial dispute resolution ecosystem. While important reforms have been undertaken—most notably the judgment enforcement reform, the establishment of the Commercial Court of Kosovo, and expanded use of arbitration and mediation—investors continue to perceive enforcement risk and legal uncertainty. As I have noted elsewhere, there is a risk of reform backsliding if these institutions are not consistently supported, insulated from political pressure, and allowed to build a track record of predictability. For foreign investors in particular, confidence that contracts will be enforced efficiently and impartially is often more important than tax incentives or promotional messaging.
The third weakness relates to the effectiveness and credibility of investment promotion and investor-facing institutions. While this area was outside the direct scope of my own programs, and Kosovo has recently been structurally reforming its investor-facing institutions, experience across many countries suggests that fragmented mandates, limited coordination, and inconsistent follow-through can significantly undermine investor outreach. Even when legal frameworks are sound, investors are discouraged if institutions cannot provide clear information, timely responses, and dependable aftercare once an investment is made.
Taken together, these challenges are not insurmountable, but they are deeply institutional rather than technical. Addressing them requires sustained political commitment, protection of reform gains, and a clear understanding that investor confidence is built through consistency, credibility, and demonstrated performance. Ultimately, foreign investors place a premium on predictability: progress on status, dispute resolution, and investment promotion will matter most if they are accompanied by sustained, credible rule-of-law reforms that investors can see functioning consistently in practice.
Post-Conflict Context
Working in post-conflict and transitional environments is a discipline of its own. What did Kosovo share with other countries you’ve worked in—such as Afghanistan, Ukraine, or Sierra Leone—and what was uniquely Kosovar?
Thompson: I have seen that society-wide conflict can produce trauma that is difficult to grasp for those who have not lived through it. That trauma can manifest itself in social, cultural, and political institutions in ways that may persist for decades. One pattern I have seen consistently across post-conflict environments is a deep and enduring mistrust of institutions.
In some cases, citizens can view institutions as having caused or exacerbated the conflict, or as having failed to prevent it. In others, “new” institutions created in the post-conflict period can struggle to gain legitimacy as truly homegrown. Whether those perceptions are fair or not, they are real, and they can last over generations. This mistrust often contributes to political fragmentation, making it difficult for durable majorities or stable governing coalitions to form. Persistent political instability, in turn, complicates the design and implementation of long-term policy reforms, as governments change frequently and priorities shift.
Kosovo has experienced its share of political instability, particularly prior to the 2021 elections and again following elections earlier this year. At the same time, Kosovo has benefited from sustained support from international institutions, which has helped maintain forward momentum on integration with European and other international systems. One example is its Rule of Law Strategy, which Kosovo began developing in 2018 through careful coordination with several international partners. That process produced a coherent and durable framework for justice-sector reform over the medium term, even amid political change.
Comparing post-conflict environments is always imperfect, because each has its own constraints and internal dynamics. That said, one lesson has been consistent in my experience: reform ideas with the greatest chance of success usually come from professionals who grew up in the country itself—people who understand the system’s informal rules and cultural realities and who are personally invested in long-term outcomes. As an international expert, I have often found my most productive role to be identifying those individuals and helping create space for them to cultivate and test their ideas.
What distinguishes Kosovo most clearly from other post-conflict contexts I have worked in is that it did not exist as an independent state until after the 1999 war. Many of the institutions operating today were created from scratch in the post-conflict period, often with substantial donor support and guidance. I recall a time when the members of the board of the Kosovo Banking and Payments Authority—later the Central Bank—were international advisors, as was the head of the Central Fiscal Authority, which today would be the Ministry of Finance. That was not unusual in the early years. When I first arrived in Kosovo in 2000, UNMIK was, in effect, the government itself. Many of today’s institutions arose out of that early framework.
So, for example, a comparison with Sierra Leone could be instructive: there, reforms have had to push against deeply entrenched institutions and cultural practices, while in Kosovo the challenge can be seen as less institutional inertia and resistance and, rather, more one of establishing legitimacy for newly created institutions. Similar Yugoslav institutions may have existed prior to the war, but there is a distinct lack of continuity between the old and the new.
I recognize there could be debate on the perspectives I am sharing here, but from my experience, the institutional origins that I have observed have shaped both Kosovo’s strengths and its ongoing challenges. It enabled rapid institutional creation, but it also has left a legacy in which questions of power, scope of authority, and institutional roles have taken longer to resolve.
And whenever I talk about international development programs, I feel the need to also point out that the work we do facilitates change, and sometimes that change is drastic. Sometimes … probably most of the time … that change can be upsetting a status quo, which can be inconvenient to those who work at our partner institutions. Just because a development advisor, or their team, recommends a reform does not always mean it is welcome. So, over the years I have learned to understand that change takes time and requires a personal commitment to building relationships and understanding among all our partners, and a healthy respect for the dedication they have and the burdens they bear as part of the reform process.
Sustainability of Reforms
USAID programs eventually close. Which reforms in Kosovo are structurally sustainable, and which ones risk stagnation or reversal once donor pressure diminishes?
Thompson: Kosovo’s justice system has made substantial progress since independence in 2008, particularly in areas where reforms have been institutionally embedded rather than program-driven. Where USAID supported justice reform, momentum generally continued even in the face of periodic political pressure. Institutions such as the Kosovo Judicial Council have demonstrated real resilience in safeguarding judicial independence and improving the administration of justice. In many respects, Kosovo is far ahead of where it stood even a decade ago.
At the same time, some reforms remain vulnerable. Where progress has depended heavily on sustained donor engagement—particularly in insulating institutions from political pressure or reinforcing reform culture rather than formal rules—the risk of stagnation or reversal is real once external support diminishes. Kosovo will not face this challenge alone, however. The good news here is that the EU has recently announced the end of the temporary measures imposed on Kosovo. I am confident that real and sustained independence of justice institutions will remain front and center as a critical objective if Kosovo is to continue on its path toward the European Union.
The Next Decade
If you were designing the next generation of rule-of-law assistance for Kosovo, what would be its core priorities—courts, enforcement, legal education, or cultural change?
Thompson: If I were designing the next generation of rule-of-law assistance for Kosovo, my focus would be less on introducing new institutions and more on consolidating and protecting the reforms already underway.
At the court level, the Commercial Court of Kosovo remains a central priority. The court was designed with substantial private-sector input, reflecting the needs of the business community it serves. Any effort to narrow its mandate or dilute its authority risks undermining Kosovo’s investment environment. That earlier private-sector and civil-society engagement was significantly facilitated by the CJA program; without continued support, maintaining that structured dialogue becomes much more difficult. Ultimately, it is both the private sector and the broader public that benefit from a responsive and resilient commercial judiciary.
One important reform left incomplete is the systematization of case administration within the Commercial Court. At the time the CJA program was discontinued, work was underway to develop a case-administration manual that would standardize procedures and forms. That effort was intended to serve as a foundation for internal automation, performance tracking, and more efficient case management. Given the court’s ongoing budget constraints, it is unlikely that sufficient resources will be available in the near term to complete this work without targeted external assistance.
Judicial education is another area where sustainability will require continued attention. While the CJA program worked closely with the Kosovo Justice Academy to establish a comprehensive commercial-law curriculum for judges and court staff, that curriculum will need periodic updating as laws and practices evolve. Over time, funding for that function should be fully absorbed into the judiciary’s regular budget cycle.
Turning to judgment enforcement, reforms in this area have generated strong momentum and enjoy broad support from the business community. That said, the private enforcement system would still benefit from targeted assistance focused on professional standards and on sustaining the automated enforcement system developed under the CJA program. While a Dutch-funded project stepped in to complete system training after the program’s closure, future support could usefully focus on strengthening the institutional capacity of the Chamber of Private Enforcement Agents to address emerging challenges and maintain professional discipline over time.
Finally, mediation remains an area where continued support would be particularly well invested. The CJA program helped courts establish referral procedures and staff mediation units, but scaling those mechanisms and ensuring their durability will require further institutional reinforcement. If mediation is to become a routine and trusted component of dispute resolution, continued assistance should focus on embedding referral capacity more deeply within court operations and ensuring that it can be sustained long after donor programs conclude.
Digitalization Challenges
Digital transformation has been a recurring theme in judicial reforms. Why has Kosovo struggled to digitalize commercial case-management systems at the necessary depth?
Thompson: One of the core challenges with digital transformation is the temptation to focus on what I often call the “shiny objects” of automation—such as case management tools, electronic filing, human resources systems, or automated payment platforms. Each of these functions can be valuable on its own, but when they are developed independently, without a coherent underlying architecture, they can become costly, fragmented, and difficult to sustain or upgrade over time.
In Kosovo, the deeper challenge has been the absence of sufficient investment in foundational digital infrastructure—particularly secure communications and interoperability. Taking a whole-of-function approach is essential. Without it, systems struggle to talk to one another, data cannot be reliably shared or analyzed, and later improvements become unnecessarily complex and expensive.
From that perspective, several priority gaps remain. These include development of a robust interoperability platform for the Kosovo Judicial Council’s case management information system so it can securely exchange data with other platforms—such as the Enforcement Management System—while preserving institutional independence and control. Additional needs include establishing a clear data classification framework and strengthening system-wide cybersecurity protections against external threats and data loss. These were among the priority areas being examined under the Commercial Justice Activity, and they illustrate why meaningful digitalization depends less on adding new tools than on building resilient digital foundations.
Human Capital and Training
Are judges, enforcement agents, and court staff adequately prepared to handle modern commercial disputes, especially those involving complex finance and technology?
Thompson: Competency-based training will always be a continuing need for judges, enforcement agents, and court staff. As noted earlier, our program worked with the Kosovo Judicial Council, the Commercial Court of Kosovo, and the Kosovo Justice Academy to develop a comprehensive commercial law training curriculum for judges and court personnel.
As with all training, however, content inevitably becomes outdated as laws and procedural rules evolve and as new financial instruments and technologies emerge. I am confident in the institutional capacity of the Judicial Council and the Justice Academy to address these challenges, but sustained effectiveness will depend on whether adequate resources for maintaining and updating competency-based training are consistently built into the judiciary’s budget appropriations process.
Regional Comparison
From your comparative experience, where does Kosovo stand today relative to North Macedonia, Albania, or Montenegro in terms of commercial-justice performance?
Thompson: I have not worked recently in North Macedonia, Albania, or Montenegro, so I do not have the same depth of firsthand insight into their justice systems as I do for Kosovo. For that reason, it is more appropriate to rely on comparative, objective indicators.
One useful reference point is the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index for 2025. On the overall Rule of Law score (as opposed to rank), Kosovo, at 0.56, performs comfortably above Albania (0.49) and slightly above North Macedonia (0.54), but just behind Montenegro (0.57). That overall score aggregates several dimensions, including constraints on government powers, regulatory enforcement, and both civil and criminal justice.
The Civil Justice sub-factor provides a more direct proxy for commercial justice performance. Here, Kosovo’s score of 0.49 places it above Albania (0.46), but below Montenegro (0.54), and slightly below North Macedonia (0.51). These figures suggest that while Kosovo performs relatively well in the region on overall rule-of-law measures, it continues to face particular challenges in civil and commercial justice.
In terms of trajectory, the picture is mixed but modestly positive over the longer term. Kosovo’s Civil Justice score rose from 0.46 in 2020 to 0.49 in 2025. While there has been some year-to-year fluctuation—0.50 in 2023 and 0.48 in 2024—the longer-term trend points to gradual improvement rather than stagnation.
Personal Reflection
After more than a decade engaging with Kosovo’s legal and business institutions, what will you personally remember most about your work here?
Thompson: Now that I’ve been outside of Kosovo for the last almost 10 months, I’ve had a bit of time to reflect on my time there. The first thing I note is that I cannot believe I have been traveling to Kosovo for over 25 years. My first visit—though it was just after the war, and Kosovo was a very different place—still does not feel like it was decades ago. It still seems fresh.
The next thing I can say is that I miss working with my team of excellent and dedicated professionals. The last two projects – the CLE program and the CJA program – have provided great professional satisfaction for me. I found excellent counterparts that were not hesitant to challenge our ideas and push back when needed, but who also, when we reached agreement, would overcome almost any barrier to achieve agreed objectives. I found a well-informed and strongly supportive USAID mission. And I formed many friendships that I expect I will have for life, even though I may be outside of the country.
I do not know what the future holds for me, but I am pretty certain that Kosovo is not done with me yet, nor I with Kosovo.
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Chris Thompson is an international development lawyer with more than two decades of experience supporting commercial justice and rule-of-law reform in post-conflict and transitional economies. He served as Chief of Party for USAID’s Contract Law Enforcement (2013–2018) and Commercial Justice Activity (2019–2025) programs in Kosovo and has worked extensively across Eastern Europe, Africa, and Central Asia.
