SC President Valentyna Danishevska Opened Conference Devoted to the Anniversary of the Supreme Court

Today, on 14 December, the conference “The Role of the Supreme Court in Protecting Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms” takes place in Kyiv. President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Hroisman and Special Adviser of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe for Ukraine Regis Brillat visited the opening of the Conference.

While starting the conference, Valentnyna Danishevska thanked the partner of the Supreme Court – the Council of Europe, particularly, the CoE Project “Support to the Implementation of the Judicial Reform in Ukraine” – for the assistance in the event organization and all participants of the conference – for their participation.

While presenting special report “Effective Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms: the First Year of the New Supreme Court”, Valentyna Danishevska recollected how the new Supreme Court started its activity.

The SC President informed that during the first month of its work, the Supreme Court inherited more than 76 thousand cases from 4 courts – high courts and the Supreme Court of Ukraine. Herewith, the oldest cases transferred to the Administrative Cassation Court within the Supreme Court were dated back to 2011. Therefore, people have been waiting for the final consideration of their cases for long 7 years. During one year of work, the Supreme Court received almost the same number of cases. In general, the SC judges got 150 thousand cases in the past year.

Valentyna Danishevska remarked that presently such enormous amount of cases is the Court’s greatest and most serious challenge. As for today, the Supreme Court has considered 81 thousand cases. This is more than a half. These figures testify the persistent and herculean work of judges of the Supreme Court.

Talking about the ways of dealing with excessive workload of the SC judges, the President of the Supreme Court noted such mechanisms applied by the judges, as the institution of a minor case, the development of uniformity of case law, exemplary cases, as well as appropriate and voluntary execution of judgments by the Government.

Valentyna Danishevska underlined that the Supreme Court already has good practice, when while executing the SC judgment in an exemplary case on restructuring of pensions, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine adopted relevant resolution on restructuring of theses pensions. Such cooperation allowed solve disputes and execute judgments in more than 2 thousand cases, as well as prevent the application to court by more than 150 pensioners.

SC President emphasized that all noted changes and titanic efforts produce results. Pursuant to Mrs. Danishevska, due to the judicial reform the level of trust to courts tends to increase: in 2018 the level of trust to courts increased up to 16 %. For example, in 2015 it was only 5 %.