Council of judges
of Ukraine

Mr Yaroslav Romaniuk, President of the Supreme Court of Ukraine, informed the Forum participants and guests on the state of the judicial reform in Ukraine in view of the efficiency of justice through the prism of social needs.

Having stressed the importance of the social changes in the judiciary, the President of the Supreme Court of Ukraine noted that the Ukrainian judicial system had been almost continuously reformed since the day of its gaining the independence. Therefore, as Mr Yaroslav Romaniuk is convinced, at the present stage of this reform it is worth focusing on the ultimate goal, which actually sets the direction and pace of the reform and provides for the search of the optimal set of means to achieve its objectives. As a result, the judicial system should ensure the maximum efficiency of the courts’ execution of their main function, namely, administration of justice.

In the opinion of the President of the Supreme Court of Ukraine, the major innovations in the course of the reform of the judicial system were: optimization and simplification of trials held in the courts of all levels, decrease in the amount of cases and length of their consideration by courts; introduction of the new institutions of the extra-judicial dispute resolution, including the mediation, and popularization of those available ones; changing the approaches to the formation of a consistent judicial practice and granting prerogatives to preventive measures. Mr Yaroslav Romaniuk expressed his confidence that the aim of the judicial reform was to ensure the functioning in Ukraine of the judicial system focused on the satisfaction of needs and interests of the court services consumers.

“Ensuring the consistency of judicial practice is the task of the highest judicial institution of every state”, emphasized the President of the Supreme Court of Ukraine. “In Ukraine, the law defines that ensuring the consistency of judicial practice is the main objective of the Supreme Court of Ukraine. Herewith, the task of the Supreme Court of Ukraine is not only to decide on a certain case as a legal dispute, but the main idea of its activities is to guide the judicial practice into a single channel through the interpretation of legal rules”, said Mr Yaroslav Romaniuk.

The President of the Supreme Court of Ukraine is convinced that the legal system should be developed and improved to respond to the social and economic changes and the needs of the society. Similarly, the legal mechanisms laid in the foundation of the activities of the court can and must be modernized. Therefore, it is important to study the experience of the world’s best examples of the judicial systems and borrow the new legal institutions that proved to be efficient in other states.

In his welcoming speech, Mr Yaroslav Romaniuk, President of the Supreme Court of Ukraine, also wished the Forum participants fruitful work within the framework of the discussion panels and expressed his confidence in the need to elaborate new recommendations during the professional discussions to implement and apply them in practice.

The IV International Judicial Forum “Judicial Reform: Status and Development Trends” is being organized by the Supreme Court of Ukraine and the newspaper “Legal Practice” in cooperation with the EU Project on “Support to Justice Sector Reforms in Ukraine” and the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.