HEARING A MINOR AS AN INSTRUMENT OF PROTECTING THE CHILD’S BEST INTERESTS IN POLISH AND MACEDONIAN PROCEDURAL LAW

Abstract

The child’s welfare has contemporarily become one of the fundamental, universal, and systemic values chiefly addressing authorities charged with applying the law, courts included.

While of supreme importance and not subject to valuation, the child’s welfare concept remains vague and escapes definition, encouraging its perception as a preventive mechanism for child objectification. Acts of international law present standards exercising fundamental human rights while constituting an obligation to introduce appropriate national-level guarantees. The paper attempts to compare solutions applied in Polish and North Macedonian procedural law. A confrontation of the experience of countries drawing on dissimilar traditions and models ought to encourage continuous improvement of procedural solutions, and their proper application in view of the special status of minors.