Conference “Uniformity of Case Law: Opinions of the European Court of Human Rights and the Supreme Court” Started Its Work

President of the Supreme Court Valentyna Danishevska presented her greeting speech at the opening of two-day Conference “Uniformity of Case Law: Opinions of the European Court of Human Rights and the Supreme Court”. The conference has started its work today, on 14 June. The SC President thanked the ECHR judges, the Council of Europe Project “Supporting Ukraine in Execution of Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights” and the Council of Europe’s Office in Ukraine for the expert assistance and the participation in the Conference.

Valentyna Danishevska remarked that recently the Council of Europe had published its opinion regarding the results of the judicial reform in Ukraine. In this opinion the CoE positively assessed legislative and institutional changes, the process of the Supreme Court establishment and its activity.

According to Valentyna Danishevska, one of the challenges before the Supreme Court was represented by jurisdictional conflicts, which significantly destabilized case-law, produced legal uncertainty and threatened to violate the fundamental right to access to trial. However, during the first year of work, the SC Grand Chamber managed to elaborate certain approaches to their solution, particularly, by means of unification of the criteria of referring a case to the jurisdiction of a particular court.

Mrs. Danishevska underlined that the institution of a pilot case had proved its efficiency; a judgment even in one such a case had impact on significant amount of typical cases and led to prompt and final solution of a certain legal conflict, which had general nature.

Acting Head of the Department for the Execution of Judgments of the ECHR Fredrik Sundberg told that during four years Ukraine had managed to make serious steps within the judicial reform, while other countries would require decades to make them. According to him, Ukrainian courts and European institutions have all possibilities to move forward and to make the judicial reform successful.

The ECHR judge Hanna Yudkivska noted that in recent times international courts more frequently faced resistance and the efforts to deny their authority; this problem was also common for national courts and was the consequence of populist movements in Europe.

The ECHR judge emphasized that the judicial system as the main defender of rights and freedoms often was the object of attacks. However, the judiciary was able to maintain and to strengthen the principles and ideals of justice.

The Deputy Head of the Council of Europe's Office in Ukraine Olena Lytvynenko assured that the Project “Supporting Ukraine in Execution of Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights” would provide Ukraine with expert, methodological and technical assistance for the successful implementation of the judicial reform. Particularly, the Project provides the development of recommendations as for upgrading Ukrainian legislation pursuant to the Council of Europe standards and ensuring the establishment of mechanism of the ECHR advisory opinions.