Higher Administrative Court suspends proceedings for lack of financing
The Higher Administrative Court has been forced to suspend its work due to lack of money for postal and other services, purchase of paper and disks.
In 2009 alone the Court has received more than 50 thousand cassation appeals and carried out cassation examinations in 25 thousand cases. Each time the Higher Administrative Court sends out 3 thousand postal items, and delay in sending these by even a day creates serious problems in considering appeals and leads to infringements of procedural terms.
The Court had been sending postal correspondence on credit, however Ukrposhta [the Ukrainian Postal Service] is refusing to provide any more services because of the debt amassed, which for October is around 62 thousand UAH.
The situation with funding for all administrative courts is critical which the Higher Administrative Court and bodies of judge self-governance have repeated warned the President, Cabinet of Ministers and Verkhovna Rada about. There have been about thirty such appeals this year, yet the situation with funding remains unchanged.
This is at a time when the electoral process is underway for which the administrative courts are assigned an especially important role. It is the Higher Administrative Court which, in accordance with Article 176 § 11 of the Code of Administrative Proceedings, acts during presidential elections as a first and final instance court in the event of appeals against its results.