Ukraine opts for a merits-based approach to the selection and evaluation of judges

"Since last year, Ukraine has opted for a new approach by injecting various procedural guarantees to make the process of selection and evaluation more merits-based and transparent", stated Team Leader of EU-Project “Pravo-Justice” Dovydas Vitkauskas at the conference “Judicial reform in Ukraine: Outputs and Further Steps”, organised by the Judicial Reform Council and the Council of Europe.

"Participation of the civil society in interviews with candidates, transparency of the interview process, public access to the candidate dossiers, psychological testing are the guarantees that limit the discretion of HQC to take an unreasonable decision. Not many European jurisdictions are using similar approaches, as the judicial selection remain relatively opaque for most members of the society. Yet it is still necessary to strike a better balance between the fairness of the process for the candidate, and the effectiveness of outcome for te public. There is no “gold standard” of an ideal judge, as the requirements for who can best perform this complex work cannot be reduced to academic-style grading and mathematical algorithms - some human discretion is still necessary, if we want a judge who has better qualities in practice, and not just in theory. The challenge is to make discretion limited, for the final decision to be trusted."

Dovydas Vitkauskas added that in the nearest future the Pravo-Justice Project will present a comprehensive assessment of the selection and evaluation of judges developed by a group renowned independent European experts, led by Georg Stawa, President of CEPEJ.