Settlement provides receipt review after Bitola stall permit application rejected as late

Elena Ristevska and the Bitola Seasonal Stall Permit Office have settled their dispute over an application rejected as late, agreeing to a review of the complete electronic receipt. The agreement provides a conditional route back to consideration on the merits, rather than an order setting aside the rejection or granting a permit.

The dispute, brought before the administrative review court serving Bitola, turns on the difference between when an application was completed and when the office entered it in its register. Ristevska claims she submitted before the deadline; the rejection relied on a register entry from the following morning.

Ristevska will provide the complete electronic receipt for inspection, and the office will review it promptly. The full receipt had not yet been inspected in the supplied record, leaving its significance unresolved when the parties agreed on this process.

If the receipt establishes that the application was completed by 30 April at 23:59, the office will return it for consideration on its merits. If the office concludes that it was not completed by then, it must provide written reasons.

The settlement contains no admission that the rejection was improper. It also gives no guarantee of a permit and includes no order granting one. The agreed review therefore addresses the timing barrier without deciding whether the application otherwise qualifies for approval.

Ristevska sought to have the late-filing rejection set aside and the application returned for consideration on its merits. She did not seek an order awarding the permit.

The office sought to preserve the rejection unless the receipt established timely completion. Its position was that an early receipt did not necessarily prove that a completed application had been submitted before the deadline.

Those positions left a narrow but consequential evidentiary question: what, exactly, does the electronic receipt establish? The settlement calls for inspection rather than resolving that question in either party's favour.

The application deadline was 30 April at 23:59. The office register lists Ristevska's application at 08:36 on 1 May 2026, and the rejection notice cited that entry as the basis for treating it as late.

The notice did not itself establish when Ristevska sent the application. Equally, the record did not establish that the receipt proved completion before the deadline.

The agreement leaves that factual issue to the office's review of the complete receipt. It records neither a judicial finding on timely completion nor a determination that the original rejection was unlawful.