‘We have up until now been an experimental place. Now it's time for us to take responsibility’. Local Kosovar judges and prosecutor’s experiences and perspectives of the EULEX’s impact on the legal order in Kosovo.

Sammanfattning: By employing seven semi-structured interviews with local judges and prosecutors in Kosovo, this study aims at examining how the European Union Rule of Law Mission (EULEX) has impacted the legal order in Kosovo and the practice of the judges and prosecutors. In addition, this study examines how the impacts of EULEX, and how the judges and prosecutors will be affected after the EULEX are withdrawn from Kosovo. The judges and prosecutors’ experiences and opinions will furthermore be analysed in the light of post-colonialism. The conclusion drawn from this research shows that by not including local voices of the judges and prosecutors in the judicial dialog, the image of the EULEX as the “experts” and “colonizers”, with “Western” standards is strengthened, which can be interpreted as a gap between the EULEX and the judges and prosecutors. In addition, it is also shown that the respondents realize the value of implementing the “Western” standards in the Kosovo’s legal system in order to develop and move forward. However, an ambivalence is shown when the respondents produce a picture of the inhabitants of Kosovo as “old fashioned” with a mentality that has not developed the same rate as the law which, according to the respondents has hindered the implementation of the “Western” laws in Kosovo. The post-colonial approach has in this thesis been the main approach in which the EULEX’s relationship to the local judges and prosecutors has been critically explored, and the law has been the forefront to that relationship