KYIV. Dec 11 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Only 21.3% of experts consider the implementation of the judicial reform in Ukraine successful, and 72.6% of them believe it is not successful (including 26.8% of them assess the course of reforms absolutely negatively), according to an expert poll conducted by the Social Monitoring public opinion survey service and the Oleksandr Yaremenko Ukrainian Institute of Social Studies.

"According to experts, most of the previously declared goals, such as solving the problem of corruption in courts, improving access to justice, cleansing the system from dishonest judges, reducing political influence on the judicial system, achieving European standards of legal proceedings in Ukraine, meeting the requirements of society after the Revolution of Dignity were not achieved,", Director of the Social Monitoring Center Dmytro Dmytruk told Interfax-Ukraine on Tuesday at a press conference on Tuesday, presenting the results of the study.

Some 60.25% of experts believe that the main positive change, which led to the implementation of judicial reform, is the increase in the transparency of the judicial process through the introduction of modern information technologies.

They indicated the low level of qualifications of law enforcement personnel (82.75%), a significant increase in court fees (71.75%), disguise (complication of schemes) of corruption (69%), declarative nature of changes (65%), and a lack of qualitative changes in legal proceedings (56.4%) among the negative consequences of the reform.

After the introduction of judicial reform, only 18.5% of the experts began to trust the judiciary more, 68.3% of respondents did not change the level of trust in courts, and 11.5% of the experts decreased the level of trust.

Some 84.8% of experts say that it is necessary to change the existing methods and approaches to judicial reform. A total of 64.3% of specialists positively estimate the idea of reforming the judicial system of Ukraine, but less than half of the experts (47.3%) positively evaluated the reform project, while 41.5% gave negative evaluations.

The experts interviewed said that the main responsibility for the introduction of judicial reform lays primarily on the current president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko (39.6%) and the head of the presidential commission on judicial reform, Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Oleksiy Filatov (17.5%).

The study was conducted from November 28 through December 6, 2018, during which sociologists interviewed 400 lawyers, law enforcement officers, judges, scientists, human rights defenders and other representatives of the professional legal community who directly experience and see the work of Ukrainian courts.