Europe to give Ukraine 6 million for judiciary reform

By 2010 the European Commission and the Council of Europe will allocate six million euros for reforming Ukraine’s judiciary system, the UNIAN agency reports. The European institutions will use this money to implement the joint program “Transparency and Efficiency of Judiciary System of Ukraine,” which was recently presented in Kyiv. Ac­cording to Laura Ga­rag­nani, Head of Operations of the European Commission Dele­gation to Ukraine, the project is aimed at assisting in establishing independent, impartial, efficient, and professional judiciary in Ukraine, as well as to ensure that the Ukrainian judiciary is transformed into a transparent and fair judicial system that is accessible to all citizens.

Lidia Izovitova, Head of the Supreme Council of Justice (this institution is the main partner on the Ukrainian side in the program implementation), said that the accessibility of the judiciary to citizens and legal entities is a burning issue now. “Citizens have to stand in lines in order to find out how their complaints or applications are being processed. At last, thanks to this program courts will be computerized so that every citizen could learn in the most convenient way at what stage his/her lawsuit, application, or complaint is. They will also see what actions the judge took during the proceedings, what procedural documents have been adopted, and what their contents is,” she said.

Izovitova also expressed her hope that the program will help obliterate the “shameful phenomenon of hostile takeovers of businesses.” She believes that a computerized system providing access to the texts of court rulings, which will be set up in Ukraine with financial support from the European institutions, will enable different courts to resolve disputes in a more professional way. “This will rule out the existence of several rulings by different courts in different regions concerning one and the same case,” she said.