Serhii Kivalov, Chairman of the Committee on Justice, met the Leaders of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) within the Project "Ukraine: Rule of Law"

02 November 2010, 12:22

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The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was represented by David Vaughn, Chief of Party at USAID Ukraine Rule of Law Project; Natalia Petrova, Deputy Director of USAID Ukraine Rule of Law Project; Oleksandr Piskun, Democracy Project Management Specialist.

 

The participants of the meeting discussed recommendations to the Law "On Judicial System and the Status of Judges" given by the attendants of the Ukrainian-American round table discussion "The Judicial Reform in Ukraine and International Standards of Judicial Authority Independence" held in Kyiv on 26-27 October 2010.   

 

Assessing the applicable legislation, representatives of the American organization mentioned the innovative character of the most provisions of a new law on the judicial system. They declared that Ukraine had considerably advanced in the judicial reform, having adopted this Law.   

 

David Vaughn deems necessary to follow several recommendations, optimizing terms of submitting an appeal, a reclaiming or cassation petition, and the period of case consideration in court to prevent unjustified infringements upon the access to justice, deterioration of standards in court resolutions and abuse of institution of disciplinary proceedings against the judges. As to the prospective cooperation, David Vaughn suggested discussing these issues, as well as the constitutional amendments in part of justice. Thus, "the Fundamental Law is suggested to envisage the right to a fair trial, increase the minimum age for an office of a judge from 25 to 30 years, and the maximum age to 70 years of age."

 

Committee Chairman Serhii Kivalov stated, "All the proposals will be considered by the working group on the judicial reform that has not stopped its work on adoption of the Law."

 

S.Kivalov singled out the following prospective amendments to the Law: establishment of the institute of justice of the peace, improvement of training of the candidates for judges and selection of judges in Ukraine, specification of the grounds for and procedure of instituting disciplinary proceedings against the judges. He also suggested that American and European colleagues helped to compile a reference book for Ukrainian judges.

 

The Parties believe that the Ukrainian courts should introduce the European technologies of distance interrogation of witnesses and other parties to a claim from the distant regions from Ukraine via video conferencing. S.Kivalov suggested that this possibility should be envisaged by the Criminal-Procedural Code of Ukraine.