Supreme Court judges take part in conference on communication between courts and society

Volodymyr Kravchuk, Judge of the Supreme Court of the Administrative Cassation Court, Member of the Committee of the Council of Judges of Ukraine on Cooperation with the Media, State and Non-Governmental Bodies and Organisations, and Yehor Krasnov, Judge of the Supreme Court of the Commercial Cassation Court, Chairman of the Committee of the Council of Judges of Ukraine on Ethics, Prevention of Corruption and Settlement of Conflicts of Interest, joined the conference ‘Communication between the Courts and Society’ held in Krakow (Poland) within the framework of the project ‘Judiciary and Society in Ukraine’.

The conference began with a welcoming speech by Esther de Rooij, Deputy President of the District Court of Amsterdam for International Cooperation and Rule of Law, Leader of the Dutch-Ukrainian project "Justice and Society in Ukraine". The trainers of the conference were Lieneke de Klerk, Senior Judge and Speaker of the District Court of East Brabant (Netherlands), and Ilse Westenenk, Head of the Communications Department, an expert of this court.

Representatives of the working groups introduced the Principles of Court-Media Communication and the Press Secretary's Guide prepared as part of the project. These Principles should create equal conditions for effective coverage of the work of the courts and help improve judicial communication with the media. The participants also discussed their general impressions of the process of developing the relevant documents and the success of the chosen approaches to work. The trainers of the training programme informed the Ukrainian judges and representatives of court administrations about the plan to implement the relevant recommendations and adapt them to different target groups.

During the conference, Volodymyr Kravchuk presented educational programmes of the Supreme Court and the Council of Judges of Ukraine for working with children and teenagers with a demonstration of educational animated films by the ‘Spravedlyvtsi’ club and the legal education movement ‘Constitution for All: Big and Small’. In addition, the judge introduced the participants to the new anti-corruption education project ‘Vladnyk Mykyta’ and suggested that these educational initiatives be disseminated among EU courts.

Also during the event, the participants examined the issue of crisis communications using two cases as examples. Finally, the experts and participants summed up the results and shared their impressions of the project's work on communication.

The event was organised by the Centre for International Legal Cooperation (CILC), which implements projects under the MATRA international support programme of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.