On 23 October 2019, the Council of Europe project “Supporting Ukraine in execution of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights” (Project) organised a round table “The High Council of Justice: Ensuring judicial independence and accountability” in Kyiv. The event was held with the participation of the head, members and representatives of the High Council of Justice as well as representatives of the Council of Europe.

The event aimed at discussing the content and structure of annual reports of the High Council of Justice on ensuring the independence of the judiciary in Ukraine, the powers and practice of the High Council of Justice as well as the standards of the Council of Europe concerning judicial independence and accountability.

During the round table, Mr Pavlo Pushkar, Head of the Division at the Department for the execution of the European Court of Human Rights judgments (ECtHR), informed the participants about the Council of Europe standards of judicial independence/impartiality and on the priority measures awaited by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe for the execution of the ECtHR judgments. Ms Danutė Jočienė, who is an international expert of the Project and a judge of the Constitutional Court of Lithuania, delivered a presentation providing practical recommendations for the preparation of the annual reports of the High Council of Justice. Finally, Mr Roman Kuybida, a national expert of the Project, notified the audience on the progress made by Ukraine in the execution of judgments of the ECtHR in the group of cases “Kulykov and Others v. Ukraine” and “Denisov v. Ukraine”.

The High Council of Justice and the Council of Europe confirmed their willingness to continue cooperation in ensuring the independence and impartiality of the judiciary, including the full execution of the Kulykov/Denisov judgments.

The Council of Europe project “Supporting Ukraine in execution of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights” is financed by the Human Rights Trust Fund and implemented by the Justice and Legal Co-operation Department of the Council of Europe. The overall objective of the project is to support Ukraine in the improvement of its national system of execution of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights that involve violations of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, where the root cause is an issue within the judiciary. The Project is focused on the following areas: independence and disciplinary of judges, effective remedies from non-enforcement of judgments of national courts and from excessive length of judicial proceedings, and on effective mechanisms of cooperation between the Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights.