March 30, Lviv: 40 Ukrainian lawyers started the Council of Europe HELP tutored course “Admissibility criteria in applications, submitted to the European Court of Human Rights”.

The training comes at a time when understanding admissibility requirements is more important than ever. The European Court of Human Rights dealt with 5 997 applications concerning Ukraine in 2025, of which 5 429 were declared inadmissible or struck out. 766 applications preliminarily passed the admissibility filter and were communicated to the Government. Broadly speaking, in the last three years only about one-third of formally valid applications proceed to communication, highlighting the strict admissibility criteria applied by the Court.

This HELP course aims at providing lawyers with structured and practice-oriented training to deepen their understanding of the admissibility criteria for individual applications submitted to the European Court of Human Rights, as well as the procedures for their preliminary assessment.

The course covers the analysis of the key admissibility criteria for applications, in particular:

• the exhaustion of domestic remedies,
• compliance with the time limit for lodging an application,
• the existence of victim status,
• the substantiation of complaints, and
• the absence of abuse of the right of application.

Particular focus is placed on how Ukrainian courts apply the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights when assessing the effectiveness of domestic remedies, as well as on the relationship between national judicial procedures and the admissibility criteria before the Court.

The participants of the launch benefited from insightful speakers who gave an overview of challenges and key principles of applying admissibility criteria:

• Implementation of the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights in the national jurisdiction shared by Vitalii Urkevych, Judge of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court, Doctor of Law;
• Typical grounds for the inadmissibility of applications against Ukraine presented by Margaryta Sokorenko, Government Agent before the European Court of Human Rights;
• Practical issues of application of the admissibility criteria by the Court outlined by Maksym Bryzitsyi, lawyer of the Secretariat of the European Court of Human Rights;

The course is organised by the Council of Europe Project “HELP for Ukraine including during wartime”, Phase II in cooperation with the Higher School of Advocacy of the National Bar Association of Ukraine and the Coordination Centre for Legal Aid Provision

HELP course “Admissibility criteria in applications, submitted to the ECtHR” is also available in self-learning format at the HELP e-learning Platform via this link.