25 judges from the administrative courts of Ukraine received guidance on how to properly handle and provide information to inquiries during wartime in Ukraine, ensuring compliance with both Ukrainian and European legislation  during the second two-days training session, organised with the support of the Council of Europe Project "Safeguarding Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Media in Ukraine". The first training was held on 2-3 November 2023.

For many years, the National School of Judges of Ukraine has been paying considerable attention to the topic of access to information and has been closely co-operating with media projects of the Council of Europe. Currently, the National School is updating the training course programme, which was developed with the involvement of a team of Council of Europe trainers, including current judges and independent experts. Tetyana Oleksiiuk, Vice-President of the “Access Info Group”, which is the monitoring body of the Tromsø Convention, is one of the trainers.

The course programme covers a wide range of topics, including provisions of national legislation on access to public information and its application practices, the constitutional principle of the publicity of the judicial process, considerations of cases containing information with limited access, and a review of European standards on access to information focusing on the provisions of the of the Tromsø Convention and the practice of the European Court of Human Rights, and others.

The Council of Europe Project “Safeguarding Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Media in Ukraine” (SFEM-UA) is implemented by the Council of Europe’s  Division for Co-operation on Freedom of Expression, within the framework of the Council of Europe Action Plan for Ukraine “Resilience, Recovery and Reconstruction” (2023-2026).