Eighth Session of the Twinning Project Steering Committee Took Place in the Supreme Court

On 25 March 2019 the eighth session of the Steering Committee of the Twinning Project “Strengthening the Institutional Capacity of the Supreme Court in the Sphere of Human Rights Protection at the National Level” took place in the Supreme Court.

The Resident Advisor of the Twinning Project and judge of the Supreme Court of Latvia Jautrite Briede informed that the Project and the Supreme Court had jointly organized a range of events, among which there had been seminars for the SC judges and their assistants, round table “Improvement of the Communication Activity of the Supreme Court”, etc.

Talking about the events, which took place within the Project as for the improvement of the SC communication activity, the judge of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court Larysa Rohach remarked that some communication events were new for representatives of the judiciary. Pursuant to Mrs. Rohach, some judges and staff officials did not have successful experience of communication with the mass-media. Talking about a judge’s comment on an adopted judgment, the issues of judicial ethics and the secret of deliberation room were very important. The judge noted that that the recommendations of the Project experts were reasonable and valuable, thus, the SC judges would distribute them among their colleagues, who would soon join judges of the Supreme Court, as well as among the whole judicial community.

Pursuant to the Deputy Head of the Department for Information and Communication Activity of the SC Mariia Shvenko, recommendations of the project experts as for the SC communication activity reflecting European experience of judicial communication were taken into account while elaborating the document regarding the communication policy of the Supreme Court processed by judges from the SC working group for management and communication in cooperation with the SC press centre. This document is being created for the qualitative improvement of the SC communication with society, as well as to outline limits of such activity for judges and the Court staff officials.

The Head of Section of the EU Delegation to Ukraine Martin Klaucke drew attention to the fact that after each event held within the Project, concrete and visible results had to be received.

While the session, the SC judges also remarked that other important issues were represented by ensuring the uniformity of case law, upgrading procedural filters, management of judges’ working hours and lack of court staff.

At the end of the meeting, the Twinning Project experts determined plans for the nearest future. Thus, they planned to hold a range of trainings and seminars, particularly, devoted to issues of abusing procedural rights, ensuring the consistency of case law, mediation, upgrading legislation and interaction between the Court representatives and media.

The Vice-President of the Criminal Cassation Court within the SC Valentyna Shchepotkina, judge of the Criminal Cassation Court within the SC Nataliia Bilyk, judge of the Administrative Cassation Court within the SC Ihor Olender, judge of the Commercial Cassation Court within the SC Tetiana Drobotova, judge of the Supreme Court of Ukraine Oleh Kryvenda, the Head of the Division for International and Legal Cooperation of the Supreme Court Lina Hubar, as well as the Twinning Project Leader and the Vice-President of the Higher Regional Court Cologne of Germany Christian Schmitz-Justen, the Junior Project Leader and representative of the Ministry of Justice of Latvia Agris Batalauskis, the Twinning Project Manager Katharina Tegeder and the Head of Justice Section of the EU Delegation to Ukraine Andrii Spivak also participated in the meeting.