The Center for Political and Legal Reforms together with experts from NGOs within a project “Public enforcement of independence and fairness of courts” developed a list of five top court decisions in Ukraine important for human rights protection. The selection was made on the basis of five criteria: importance of protected rights, potential or actual impact of a court decision on judicial or administrative proceeding; consideration of international standards of human rights; persuasive wording of a court decision; “courage” of a judge or judges who ruled in spite of a dominant practice or “political line”.
The fourth award was won by the decision of 30 August 2012 taken in the case initiated by International public interest environmental law organization Environment-People-Law. By this decision the Economic court in Lviv (judges Artemovych, Moroziuk, and Tsikal) for the first time in judicial practice proved the obligation of a private enterprise causing adverse impact on the environment to release public information related to this impact according to the Law of Ukraine “On Access to Public Information”. The appellate court upheld the decision and it became fully effective.
Thus, the rating emphasizes the importance of ensuring proper access to environmental information.
