Senior Communication Expert for HACC

General background

The High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) is one of institutional partners of the EUACI that is responsible for adjudicating high-level corruption cases in Ukraine.

On 20 November 2025, the HACC Assembly of Judges approved the Court’s Institutional Development Strategy for 2026–2028. Several of the Strategy’s result-based goals relate directly to communications, including: updating the Court’s communication strategy; establishing a media monitoring and analytics system; building crisis communication capacity; further professionalising the communications function; and redesigning the Court’s website.

At the same time, HACC continues to face targeted smear campaigns aimed at discrediting its performance and governance. Countering these threats requires the Court to strengthen its ability to communicate proactively, transparently, and effectively — both highlighting its achievements and addressing challenges with credibility.

To support HACC in meeting these strategic priorities, the EUACI seeks to engage a Senior Communication Expert who will assist the Court in building its institutional communications capacity.

Objective

Overall: To provide HACC (both 1st instance and Appeal Chamber) with expert communication support in updating its communication strategy (to correspond better to its institutional strategy for 2026–2028) and building its capacity to respond effectively to outstanding communication challenges, incl. in crisis situations and reputational risks they engender.

Sub-objective: To contribute to the drafting of HACC’s updated communication strategy for 2026–2028 and provide targeted communication advisory support.

Scope of work

• assist HACC in revising its Communication Strategy, ensuring clear public-trust objectives, target audiences, key messages, and channels aligned with the 2026–2028 Institutional Development Strategy;
• support the launch of a media monitoring system and establish targets and a performance-evaluation framework for the Court’s communications function;
• assist in drafting a Crisis Communications Policy, covering triggers, roles, escalation pathways, message templates, and post-incident review, and support its implementation;
• map and re-engineer internal decision-making processes for content production, sign-off, and issue escalation;
• assist in conducting a website audit and support the implementation of identified improvements;
• provide practical recommendations on managing news triggers and media criticism, and on proactively communicating the Court’s news, initiatives, and achievements;
• prepare HACC spokespersons for media interviews, public speeches, and other public appearances through practical guidance (upon requests);
• provide other related services.

Deliverables

The Service Provider will be responsible for delivering the following outputs (the list is indicative and maybe expanded in the course of the assignment):

• draft of revised Communication Strategy;
• suggestions to content production planning (content plans);
• suggestion to OR Draft system of HACC’s key communication indicators to be tracked by the HACC leadership and communication team;
• draft Crisis Communications Policy;
• mapping of key bugs/problems identified during a website audit (from the perspective of the communication function, not a technical one);
• suggestions to improvements of internal decision-making processes for content production, sign-off, and issue escalation; recommendations for further communication capacity building if relevant.

The Service Provider shall also be required to deliver the following:

Qualifications:

The Service Provider should have the following qualifications:

• Master’s degree in Journalism, Communications, Public Relations, or a related discipline;
• At least 5 years of relevant professional experience as a communication expert/adviser, preferably in the justice, rule of law, or anti-corruption sector;
• Proven track record of implementing communication strategies and crisis communication frameworks;
• Strong understanding of Ukraine’s media landscape (mandatory);
• Excellent analytical, drafting, and presentation skills;
• Strong communication skills in both Ukrainian and English;
• Previous experience working with anti-corruption reforms or judicial institutions in Ukraine will be considered an advantage.

Workload

The expected workload under the contract is up to 50 working days.

Timeframe

The date of contract signature – until 30 April 2027.

Payments

Payments for the services will be made in bi-monthly installments, in UAH equivalent to the amount in EUR according to the NBU exchange rate.

Reporting and management

The performance of the Service Provider will be judged upon reaching the purpose of this contract as well as obtaining its results, as indicated in the section “Objective” and “Deliverables” herein respectively. Moreover, the performance of the Service Provider will be judged upon the successful implementation of all the specific activities indicated in Section “Scope of work” of this document.

By signing the contract, the Service Provider agrees to hold in trust and confidence any information or documents (“confidential information”) disclosed to the Service Provider or discovered by the Service Provider or prepared by the Service Provider in the course of or as a result of the implementation of the contract, and agrees that it shall be used only for the contract implementation and shall not be disclosed to any third party. The Service Provider also agrees not to retain copies of any written information or prototypes in its archive and for its use.

How to apply

The deadline for submitting the proposal is the end of the day on 1 June 2026.

All interested candidates should submit a CV (no more than 3 pages), with an indication of the desired daily fee.

If these documents are not submitted in line with the request above, the bid will not be considered.

The proposal should be submitted within the above deadline to [email protected] cc to [email protected] indicating the subject line: Senior Communication Expert for HACC.

You will receive an auto-reply from the [email protected] mailbox when the offer has been received. If you do not receive an auto-reply, your offer was not received and you should contact the EUACI.

Bidding language: English.

Any clarification questions regarding the terms of reference should be addressed to [email protected], not later than 29 May 2026, 17:00 Kyiv time.

Please note that the name of the tender winner will be published on the website of the EUACI.

Evaluation criteria