A regular meeting of the Joint Council on Constitutional Justice of the European Commission for Democracy through Law was held
Judge of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, member of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission), member of the Sub-Commission on Constitutional Justice, Serhiy Holovaty participated in the 17th meeting of the Joint Council on Constitutional Justice of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission), held on June 27-28, 2018 in Lausanne, Switzerland.
During the meeting, the Secretariat of the Venice Commission presented the main communication tools provided by the Venice Commission for effective communication between national constitutional jurisdictions. In particular, it was about the Bulletin on Constitutional Case-law; CODICES database containing summaries and full texts of about 10,000 judgements of the national constitutional courts; public and restricted Web-site of the Venice Commission, which allows for the rapid exchange of information on legal issues of interest to the courts; advisory opinions (amicus curiae) provided by the Venice Commission upon the requests of the constitutional courts.
The participants of the event were informed about the latest results of the Venice Commission meeting, which took place on June 22-23, 2018, as well as on the state of cooperation between the Commission and the regional groups and the World Conference on Constitutional Justice. In particular, it was said that the Commission is currently examining the functioning of the Institute of Dissent Opinion (on which a relevant document will be prepared) and finalising a report on individual access to constitutional justice.
In addition, as part of the planned activities, on June 28, 2018, a mini-conference "Gender, Equity and Discrimination" was held, during which the participants discussed the latest trends and approaches to understanding the issues of the conference topic, shared the experience and jurisprudence of the relevant courts. Particular attention was paid to the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights on these matters.
The visit program envisaged the visit to the Federal Supreme Tribunal of Switzerland and familiarisation with its activities. A training for the liaison officers of the national constitutional courts was also organised by the Venice Commission, during which the Guidelines for the presentation of contributions to the Bulletin on Constitutional Case-law and Codices and the various IT-tools at the disposal of the liason officers were presented.
