COURTS OF DIFFERENT INSTANCES On the court’s information board: • in 73% of cases in first instance courts; • in 93% in courts of appeal; • in 98% in courts of higher level. However, the high courts have the practice of scheduling all cases for one and the same time, which complicated the attendance by the monitors of those hearings they wanted to participate in. With this type of notification the monitors were unable to plan their time. The parties to the case and their representatives have similar issues, and sometimes spend the whole day in court. In addition, only in 75% of cases the hearings schedule was accurate in first instance courts, and in 86% of cases – in courts of appeal. In 98% of cases the monitors were able to get inside the room where the hearing of the case took place in first instance courts; in 99% – in courts of appeal, 100% – in courts of higher level. The biggest challenge in cassation courts is related to the lengthy waiting at the entrance to the court building. One of the monitors noted he had to wait for almost half an hour at the entrance to the High Specialized Court of Ukraine for Civil and Criminal Cases before being escorted to the courtroom by a court guard. Our monitors did not receive any clear explanations why they needed to wait for the court guard at the entrance to the court building. In 74% of cases the first instance court considered cases in the court hearing room, the judges of higher courts considered cases only in courtrooms. The judges did not take interest in who was present at the hearing except the parties to the case: • in 62% of cases in first instance courts; • in 74% – in courts of appeal; • in 83% – in courts of higher instance. When opening the hearing, the courts announced the case that was being heard: • in 88% of cases in first instance courts; • in 95% – in courts of appeal; • in 96% – in courts of higher instance. Regarding the announcement by the presiding judge of the composition of the court, this requirement was observed: • in 74% of cases in first instance courts; • in 93% – in courts of appeal; • in 96% – in courts of higher instance. The judges of first instance courts publicly pronounced the court judgement in 90% of the court hearings in which this judgement was supposed to be pronounced, and the judges of higher instances – in 100% of cases. In 4% of cases at the courts of appeal the monitors noted that the court judgement was pronounced not clearly and was hard to understand. At the same time, regarding the cassation instance the monitors reported that the judge pronounced the court judgement in a low voice and not clearly only in one case. Report on the findings of the first trial monitoring programme in Ukraine 37