On 4 May 2022, the representatives of the Council of Europe (CoE) and the Supreme Court (SC) held a working online-meeting on cooperation actions in the criminal justice area in the times of war in Ukraine.
Stanislav Kravchenko, Head of the Criminal Cassation Court within the SC, informed about the work of the justice system during the war, the issues arising in criminal proceedings, and legislative amendments to the Criminal and Criminal Procedural Codes aimed at resolving the challenges in the criminal justice area.
«Despite everything, we were, we are, and we always will be devoted to the European standards, to the standards of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms», – noted Stanislav Kravchenko.
The CoE representatives emphasised that in the past months the CoE activities in the criminal justice area in Ukraine have been focused on the needs of Ukrainian stakeholders arising from the aggression of the Russian Federation. The CoE cooperation with the Ukrainian prosecution service was outlined, as well as strengthening the coordination with judiciary was highlighted. By this time a broad spectrum of priority adjustments to the CoE-Ukraine Action Plane 2018-2022 have been agreed with the Ukrainian authorities.
Representatives of the CoE and SC discussed the admissibility of evidence, inter alia, received from open sources, considerations regarding military specialisation in courts, needs of professional capacity enhancement of judges in the context of criminal proceedings arising from the war. Cooperation steps were agreed upon.
Participants of the meeting included Bozhena Malanchuk, project coordinator, CoE Directorate General Human Rights and Rule of Law, Iryna Kushnir, manager of the CoE Project “Support for judicial institutions and processes to strengthen access to justice in Ukraine”, Natia Japaridze, manager of the CoE Project “Human Rights Compliant Criminal Justice System in Ukraine”, Rasim Babanly, Head of Analytical and Legal Work Department, and Lina Hubar, Head of the Department of International Cooperation of the SC.
