On May 13, 2019 the Head of the Council of Europe Office in Ukraine, Marten EHNBERG took part in the opening ceremony. “The judicial reform is one of the priorities for the Council of Europe, with a focus on implementation of the relevant Constitutional amendments and further improvement of both the legislation and practices, so as to ensure and independent and professional judiciary in Ukraine”, Mr. Ehnberg emphasized in his statement.

On May 14, 2019 Mr. Regis BRILLAT, Special Adviser of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe for Ukraine, was present during the training. He congratulated judges of the Supreme Court on their being elected to the high positions.

Within the framework of the Council of Europe projects, Support to the Implementation of the Judicial Reform in Ukraine and Supporting Ukraine in the Execution of Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, several experienced international and Ukrainian experts were invited to take part in the course. Associate professor of the Bulgarian Academy of Science Diana KOVATCHEVA in her extensive presentation spoke to the orientation course participants about the key standard-setting bodies of the Council of Europe concerning the functioning of the judiciary. Lorena BACHMAIER-WINTER, Professor of Law from Complutense University of Madrid in her presentation accentuated the need to ensure independence of judges for proper and professional functioning of judiciary. The Supreme Court judges paid a lot of attention to the presentation of Professor Danute JOČIENĖ, Judge of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania and former judge of the European Court of Human Rights, who informed them in detail about the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights concerning Ukraine as regards the independence of the judiciary guaranteed by Article 6 of the ECHR.

Dmytro TRETIAKOV, Senior Lawyer of the Registry of the European Court of Human Rights and Dmytro HUDYMA, Judge of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court, spoke to the judges about the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights regarding Ukraine and some challenges for the Supreme Court related to decisions of the European Court of Human Rights in cases against Ukraine.

Other participants of the orientation course were Natalia SHUKLINA, Vice-rector of the National School of Judges of Ukraine; Tatyana FULEI, Head of the Unit of Methodology Support to the Judiciary of the National School of Judges of Ukraine; and Ivan LISHCHYNA, Deputy Minister of Justice of Ukraine – Agent before the European Court of Human Rights. In the final presentation on that day, Pavlo PUSHKAR, Head of Division, Department for the Execution of Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights of the Council of Europe, focused on the important role of the Supreme Court in implementing decisions of the European Court of Human Rights against Ukraine.