On Monday 21 March 2016 the Minister of Justice of Ukraine paid a visit to CILC to discuss opportunities for assisting in Ukraine’s judicial reform process. Minister Petrenko was in the Netherlands for a bilateral meeting with his Dutch counterpart Minister Van der Steur and for signing several treaties of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH). CILC was very happy to welcome Minister Petrenko and his delegation in the afternoon to talk about legal reform.
Minister Petrenko spoke of Ukraine’s reform agenda and the main challenges in its implementation, and he invited CILC to contribute to this effort. He expressed support for a project proposal of CILC and its Ukrainian partner organisation, the Centre for Judicial Studies (CJS), aimed to improve the administration of justice in Western Ukraine. He also asked CILC to assess the possibility of developing a new initiative on enhancing Ukraine’s penitentiary and probation systems.
CILC Director Willem van Nieuwkerk and Project Manager Lino Brosius presented on the CILC-CJS proposal and highlighted the small-scale cooperation between the Courts of Appeal of Arnhem-Leeuwarden, Krakow and Lviv that orginated in 2013. This cooperation of Dutch, Polish and Ukrainian peers formed the basis for the development of a full-fledged multi-stakeholder project proposal, which is currently being assessed by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.