Human rights activists present judges, who refer to ECHR rulings, with ‘sunflowers’

Ten Ukrainian courts, which referred to the judgments of the ECHR most often, were presented with Precedent UA 2015 award.

As the Human Rights Information Centre correspondent reports, the human rights activists annually study the practice of the Ukrainian courts regarding their references to the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). According to the study results, the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union established the Precedent UA 2015 award. Ten Ukrainian courts, which referred to the judgments of the ECHR most often, were presented with the award.

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The representatives of the courts were presented with the bronze sunflowers, made by Lviv craftsman Yuri Haida. The organizers explained that the statuette represented the momentum to the sun, that is, to the light of human rights, which all the courts must turn to under any circumstances.

The specialists of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union examined the court rulings from the unified state register of judgments as of August 3, 2015. They studied 853,162 judgments and chose 593 of them, where the ECHR rulings were applied in accordance with the facts of the case, considered by a national court, and the content of the judgment was not distorted. Out of 67 judgments of the European Court, 41 judgments were applied by the national courts and 26 were not applied.

According to the study, the Kyiv region courts were most often guided by the ECHR judgments, having applied 24 rulings. In Dnipropetrovsk region, the judges applied 15 judgments of the European Court, in Zaporizhzhia region – 12 judgments, in Kharkiv region – 11 judgments, Sumy region – 11 judgments.

The High Specialized Court of Ukraine on Civil and Criminal Cases became the leader of the ranking this year. It is followed by the Sharhorod District Court of Vinnytsia region, the Court of Appeal of Kyiv, the Kamenets-Podilsk District Court of Khmelnitsky region and others.

Executive Director of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union Arkadiy Bushchenko notes that the award is intended to draw attention to compliance of the Ukrainian courts with the European Court practice and to encourage improvements. The award is named so because the human rights activists believe that the precedent is a very important phenomenon.

“The authoritative opinion of a judge is one of the most important components of the legal system. It is a judge who embodies the initiatives written by lawmakers. And any provision has no effect without the position of the judge,” Bushchenko said.

He said that the practice of higher courts on this matter would not be studied next year, and, accordingly the awards would not be given, because these courts should be actually taught the interpretation of the European Court judgments. However, such analysis would be useful for the courts of the first instance.

As judge of the Kamenets-Podilsk District Court of Khmelnitsky region Yaroslav Voevidko noted, the judges were actually awarded for taking into account the judgments of the European Court, which recognized their own previous decisions as inappropriate. However, he said that the judges referred to the ECHR practice to avoid these drawbacks in future.

“But what did the prosecutor’s office and the pre-trial investigation bodies do to restore the violated rights? The Supreme Court, the High Specialized Court correct mistakes, send the case for new consideration. But what measures have been taken against those who violate these rights? None,” Yaroslav Voevidko noted.

He added that the new Code of Criminal Procedure deprived a judge of the right to respond to such a violation by a separate ruling and to open a case against a person who has violated human rights.