Judicial reform is happening: what’s left to do to fulfil the key requirement of the EU

Ukraine needs to meet a number of requirements to maintain its EU candidate status and start full-fledged negotiations on the EU accession. Continuing judicial reform is one of the key requirements. It is the foundation Ukraine’s progress depends upon in other areas: political, social and economic.

The judicial reform in Ukraine has been under way for many years with variable success. The issue of ensuring quality in renewing (cleansing) the composition of judiciary and appointment of judges is one of the important areas of the reform. The other important issue is resuming the work of the self-governing bodies of the judiciary, specifically the High Council of Justice (HCJ) and High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine (HQCJU), which have not worked for over three years. As a reminder, the HCJ is responsible for approving the final staffing and disciplinary decisions regarding judges (appointments, dismissals, prosecution, etc.) and the HQCJU is in charge of their selection and evaluation.

Two newly established auxiliary bodies play a special role in this process. International experts with the right to a decisive vote make up half of them. These bodies are the Ethics Council and the Competition Commission for the selection of members of the HQCJU, which were created to select honest and professional members of the HCJ and HQCJU respectively. The newly appointed members, in turn, must ensure the renewal of the entire judiciary.

Since the very beginning, the Ethics Council has faced many challenges. Pursuant to the law, the first one was the integrity check of the HCJ members at the time. Fearing the integrity check, 12 of them resigned early, leaving the body without authority since the end of February. The full-scale military invasion is the second challenge that impacted the work of the Ethics Council due to objective reasons. Since the start of the war, the Ethics Council has taken additional measures to ensure information security of the candidates to the High Council of Justice. In particular, the interviews are now closed to the public. The important part is that the recordings of the interviews will be published after the end of the war so that everybody could view them. The most important thing is that the decisions of the Ethics Council leave no doubt about its independence and impartiality.

After resuming the interviews at the end of spring, the Ethics Council has already completed the evaluation of candidates to the HCJ from the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and the Congress of Representatives of Law Institutions and Scientific Institutions of Ukraine. Both of them have already appointed HCJ members on their quotas, bringing their total number to 7. Now, the Ethic Councils is continuing to interview candidates from the Congress of Judges and has also started evaluation of candidates on the quotes of the President and the Conference of Prosecutors of Ukraine. This means that by the end of the year, there is a good chance for the High Council of Justice, which hasn’t been able to work since the start of the year due to the absence of a quorum (15 members, the majority of which are judges), to resume its work.

The Competition Commission for the selection of members of the HQCJU also renewed its work. As of now, the process of accepting documents has been completed, and the interviews are expected to start soon. Considering that around 300 people submitted their applications for the competition, there is a good chance that professionals that meet the integrity criteria will be selected to the HQCJU. This is the biggest competition in the justice system in the entire history of independent Ukraine.

It is also important to mention the need for improving the selection procedure to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. The amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine adopted in 2016 provide that the selection must be done on the basis of a competition. However, no corresponding law that would introduce such a procedure has been adopted since for one reason or another. After Ukraine was granted the EU candidate status, it seems, the process has finally moved from a standstill. A corresponding draft law has recently been passed in the first reading. So, now, we expect the parliament members to pass the law in its entirety until the end of the year, thereby fulfilling one of the primary tasks Ukraine is facing on its path to the EU.

The judicial reform has been under way for many years, but we are confident that this time it will end in success thanks to the unequivocal choice of the Ukrainian people of the European vector of development. We are confident that Ukraine will use this historical chance to establish the rule of law, ensure proper access to justice and create favourable conditions for doing business.

Source: LB.UA