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The National School of Judges of Ukraine and the Council of Europe held a pilot training on access to public information for judges of administrative courts

On 2-3 November 2023, the National School of Judges of Ukraine in partnership with the Council of Europe Project "Safeguarding Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Media in Ukraine" held a pilot training for judges of administrative courts "Access to public information. Application of the legislation and current judicial practice", which was attended by 30 judges from various regions and court instances.

"Judicial control of administrative courts over the activities of information holders plays a significant role in addressing obstacles for access to information. That is why this training is dedicated to this matter," – said Ms Liubov HONCHAR, Head of the Training Department for Lecturers (Trainers) of the National School of Judges of Ukraine, an Ex-Judge of the Supreme Administrative Court of Ukraine.

For many years, the National School of Judges of Ukraine has been paying considerable attention to the topic of access to information and has been closely co-operating with media projects of the Council of Europe. Currently, the National School is updating the training course program, which was developed with the involvement of a team of skillful lecturers, including current judges and independent experts: Mr Yan BERNAZIUK, Judge of the Administrative Court of Cassation as part of the Supreme Court; Ms Tetyana SHYNKAR, Judge of the Eighth Administrative Court of Appeal; Ms Iryna VERBA, Judge of the Dnipropetrovsk District Administrative Court; Ms Hanna LEBEDIEVA, Judge of the Odesa District Administrative Court; Mr Valeriy KUZMENKO, judge of the district administrative court of Kyiv; Ms Tetyana OLEKSIYUK, a local consultant of the Council of Europe and Vice-President of the monitoring body of the Tromsø Convention “Access Info Group”; Ms Iryna KUSHNIR, an expert and a Council of Europe Project Manager.

The course program covers a wide range of topics, in particular: provisions of national legislation on access to public information and the practice of its application; the constitutional principle of publicity of the judicial process and the peculiarity of considering cases that contain information with limited access; review of European standards on access to information with a focus on the provisions of the Tromsø Convention* and the practice of the @European Court of Human Rights and others.

The history of the Council of Europe cooperation with national partners in the field of freedom of expression dates back more than 10 years and remains one of the priority areas of work within the framework of the Project “Safeguarding Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Media in Ukraine” which is implemented in the framework of the Council of Europe Action Plan for Ukraine “Resilience, Recovery and Reconstruction” for the period of 2023-2026.

The Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents (or Tromsø Convention) is the first international document recognizing the general right of access to official documents, which is binding on the ratifying countries. The convention was adopted in 2009, but came into force at the end of 2020, thanks to Ukraine, which became the tenth country to ratify it.

#CoE_AccesstoInformation #CoE_TromsoConvention #РЄ_доступ до інформації #РЄ_КонвенціяТромсо