On 15 April 2020 representatives of the Council of Europe held an online meeting with the Prosecutor General of Ukraine Ms Iryna Venediktova. The objective of the meeting was to discuss further cooperation areas between the Council of Europe and the Office of the Prosecutor General.
Ms Olena Lytvynenko, the Deputy Head of the Council of Europe Office in Ukraine congratulated the Prosecutor General on her appointment and emphasized that the Council of Europe has provided its support to Ukraine on all the stages of criminal justice reforms in Ukraine since the adoption of the Criminal Procedure Code in 2012 and until today and is fully committed to continue such support.
During the meeting the participants discussed further reforms of public prosecution service and the support that the Council of Europe can provide within the framework of the project “Human Rights Compliant Criminal Justice System in Ukraine”. The Council of Europe stands ready to support all the initiatives aimed at further strengthening of independence, transparency and efficiency of the prosecution service of Ukraine. Special emphasis was given to relevance of conducting functional and organizational analysis of regional and local prosecutor’s offices in order to develop a unified approach to their reform.
Mr Tigran Karapetyan, the Head of Human Rights National Implementation Division of the Directorate General of Human Rights and Rule of Law also mentioned that the Council of Europe welcomes the establishment of the Department of Procedural Guidance in Criminal Proceedings with Regards to Tortures and Other Serious Violations of Human Rights by the Law Enforcement Agencies of the Office of the Prosecutor General as well as the development of the Strategy for Combating Torture and Ill-treatment. The abovementioned steps are important in implementation of the judgements of the European Court of Human Rights in the group of Kaverzin cases.
On her part, the Prosecutor General thanked the partners for their support and assured that the reform of public prosecution service would continue. She also emphasized the need to constantly increase the level of knowledge of existing and newly appointed prosecutors who should remain in the system. Ms Venediktova noted that it was important to improve the Roadmap of public prosecutor's reform with a view to harmonizing it with all the ongoing reform processes.
The meeting was held within the Council of Europe Project “Human rights compliant criminal justice system in Ukraine”, which is part of the Action Plan of the Council of Europe for Ukraine 2018-2021.
