Members of the Commission took part in the expert discussion “Specialized Anti-Corruption Court: Best International Practices and European Experience”
On 3 March 2017 the members of the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine Mr. Andrii Vasylenko and Mr. Andriy Kozlov took part in an expert discussion “Specialized Anti-Corruption Court: Best International Practices and European Experience”, organized with the support of the USAID New Justice Program.
The event began with the presentation of the analytical document “Specialized Anti-corruption Courts. Comparative analysis”, prepared by Mr. Matthew C. Stephenson, a Professor at the Harvard Law School (Cambridge, USA) and Ms. Sofie A. Schutte, a Senior Advisor of the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre of the Christian Michelsen Institute (Bergen, Norway) based on U4.
Experts analyzed in detail the models of specialized anti-corruption courts, which are currently operate in 20 countries of the world, according to such criteria as: the size of the courts, the position in the hierarchy of judicial bodies, the mechanisms of the election and removal of judges, the scope of jurisdiction of courts, the procedures of reviewing and appealing decisions, as well as their connections with anti-corruption prosecutor offices.
During the presentation, the participants acquainted with the world examples of the creation and functioning of anti-corruption courts and assessed the status of judges working with them and discussed the reasons for the need to establish such courts and their models of organization. Such possibility of correlating the advantages and disadvantages of a model of the anti-corruption court is very useful in view of the need to establish an appropriate court in Ukraine in the near future, in accordance with the latest constitutional amendments.
In the second part of the event, Mr. Pavol Zilincik, the Head of Human Rights Protection Department at Office of the Public Defender of Rights (Bratislava, Slovak Republic) described the experience of Slovakia in setting up a specialized anti-corruption court and informed about the latest results of its work.
At the end of the meeting Ms. Olha Nikolaieva, the legal adviser of New Justice Program, outlined the main theses of the meeting and gave recommendations on the peculiarities, that should be noticed by Ukrainian partners, who will be directly involved in the creation of the Supreme Anti-corruption Court.
Reference:
The USAID New Justice Program started its work in October 2016.
The Program is implemented to support the judiciary, Government, Parliament, Civil Society and the people of Ukraine in the implementation of judicial reform taking into account the Constitutional amendments 2016 in Strategy for reforming the judiciary structure, the judiciary proceedings and related legal institutions and the Action Plan for its implementation for 2015-2020.
The USAID New Justice Program builds on the achievements of the USAID Ukraine Rule of Law Project and USAID FAIR Justice Project and will use its progress for coordination of close cooperation with Ukrainian partners, USAID and US Government Projects and other projects of International donor organizations in Ukraine.
