Communication between courts and society: new challenges and new developments in Ukrainian-Dutch cooperation

The Project "Judiciary and Society in Ukraine" continues to work on improving judicial communication with various target groups, such as civil society in general, litigants, media representatives, etc.

Teams from the five courts attended the event in July 2023, where they had the opportunity to exchange experiences and new ideas with their Dutch counterparts - Lieneke de Klerk, Senior Judge and Spokesperson of the District Court of Oost-Brabant (Netherlands), and Ilse Westenenk, Communications Advisor of the District Court of Oost-Brabant. During the training, Ukrainian judges-spokespersons and press secretaries present their best practices in the field of external communication, and their Dutch colleagues offer effective solutions of the Dutch courts in the field of cooperation with the press and internal court communication.

The event was welcomed by Nataliia Blazhivska, Supreme Court Judge at the Administrative Cassation Court and national expert of the Project "Judiciary and Society in Ukraine", who noted that proper communication was an important tool for building trust in the judiciary.

Experience shows that the public is generally not interested in how many cases the court has heard, how many of them were upheld by higher instance courts, or, for example, that the parties to a trial have no grounds for filing motions for recusal and trust the court.

However, a particular case before this court can generate a great deal of public interest, and it is this case that will shape public opinion in the broadest sense. The public's perception of trust in the courts will largely depend on the clarity, comprehensibility and timeliness of the information provided by the court.

The assessment of the level of trust in the judiciary, as we have seen, depends to a greater extent not on the analysis of objective parameters (such as the number of justified recusals, complaints or statistics on overturned court decisions), but on the general perception of trust in the court by ordinary citizens (i.e. those who may never have been to court). It should be noted that this "general perception" is formed by ordinary citizens on the basis of information available in the media, social networks, etc. Objective, factual information about the court's activities is mostly reported only by specialised media. For this reason, the work carried out in this project to develop effective solutions in the area of cooperation with the media and external communication of the court is extremely important.

According to the Dutch colleagues, the Ukrainian courts are aware of their high responsibility towards society and are striving to improve communication with the public, which will contribute to a better understanding of various aspects of the administration of justice. Judges-spokespersons and court press secretaries are an important link between courts and society, which is why developing consistent approaches to communication with the public is key to the effective functioning of the judicial system.

According to the project leader, Deputy President of the District Court of Amsterdam for International Cooperation and the Rule of Law, Esther de Rooij, such events promote the exchange of experience and cooperation between judges, build trust and understanding between the professional communities of the two countries. For the Kingdom of the Netherlands, an effective and fair Ukrainian judiciary is one of the keys to Ukraine's prospects of becoming part of the European Union family, and efforts to bring judicial practices closer together and to integrate Ukrainian judges into the EU judicial community are of great importance in supporting the European future of our country.

The Project "Judiciary and Society in Ukraine" is implemented by the Centre for International Legal Cooperation (The Hague) and funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands under the MATRA programme.

The Dutch-Ukrainian Project aims to strengthen the relationship between the judiciary and society and to enhance the rule of law by promoting more effective administration of justice and improving the efficiency of courts.