Acting Chairman of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine Serhiy Holovaty held a meeting with the Head of the Seimas Ombudsmen's Office of the Republic of Lithuania Augustinas Normantas
Acting Chairman of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine Serhiy Holovaty held a meeting with the Head of the Seimas Ombudsmen's Office of the Republic of Lithuania Augustinas Normantas at the Constitutional Court of Ukraine.
Senior Advisor to the Seimas Ombudsmen's Office of the Republic of Lithuania Vytautas Valentinavičius and representative of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Viktor Barvytskyi participated in the event.
At the beginning of the meeting Serhiy Holovaty outlined in details the activities of the domestic body of constitutional jurisdiction, noting, in particular, the amendments to the Constitution introduced in 2016, which also touched upon the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. According to the speaker, a number of innovations were introduced, among which, in particular, a new institute - an individual constitutional complaint by which a person can protect his/her rights. "The Constitution opened the door to the application of this institute, but for a long time it was impossible to apply it for formal reasons, in particular, 
because of the long adoption of the new Law on the Constitutional Court and its internal Rules of Procedure", emphasised Acting Chairman of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine.
Serhiy Holovaty drew attention to the fact that in order to begin the consideration of constitutional complaints, the Court had to work out certain mechanisms and create new structure of the Court. So, the next step was the adoption of the Rules of Procedure in February this year, he added. "With the adoption of the procedural document, the Court established the Senate and the Boards and began to consider constitutional complaints", noted Acting Chairman of the Court.
Serhiy Holovaty stressed that more than 800 constitutional complaints had already been received by the Court. "Altho
ugh we do not have the experience of consideration of the constitutional complaints," he said, "however, each Judge understands the importance of this instrument for the protection of human rights and is ready to implement it".
In addition, Serhiy Holovaty emphasised another important innovation in the reform of the constitutional jurisdiction body. According to him, now the Court in its decision can establish the order and terms of its execution. Such a provision was first applied by the Court in its decision on the compliance of Article 216 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine to the Constitution of Ukraine (constitutionality), where the Court found this article unconstitutional and 
provided the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine with a three-month time limit to bring the legislation into conformity with its decision.
Serhiy Holovaty noted that importance of this decision is that it was adopted in the case upon the constitutional petition of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights. Statistics show that the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights quite often refers to the Court: over the history of the activity of our constitutional control body there were more than 50 applications from this institution. This fact shows the long and productive cooperation between the Constitutional Court of Ukraine and the institute of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights.
During the meeting, the interlocutors discussed other relevant issues and expressed their hope for further fruitful cooperation.
