The draft law on the High Council of Justice No. 5180 should be finalized considering the proposals of the civil society, otherwise prior achievements of the judicial reform with regard to the recruitment of new judges will be reduced to nothing. At the time, this draft law should be finalized and adopted as soon as possible, so as not to block implementation of the constitutional amendments and activity of the Council any further.

On November 3, 2016, the Verkhovna Rada adopted the draft law “On the High Council of Justice” in the first reading.

It should be noted that adoption of the Law “On the High Council of Justice” is an important step towards implementation of the Constitutional amendments on justice and the Law “On the judiciary and the status of judges.”

The Reanimation Package of Reforms calls for adopting the Law “On the High Council of Justice” as soon as possible, but only provided it meets the criteria set by the public. 

MPs Oksana Syroid, Olena Sotnyk, Yehor Soboliev, Tetiana Ostrikova, Leonid Yemets, Svitlana Zalishchuk, Aliona Shkrum, and Viktoria Ptashnyk have submitted their proposals to the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Legal Policy and Justice.

RPR experts have studied their proposals and believe that overall they meet the public demands and should be taken into account in the course of the second reading.

The RPR draws attention to the following fundamental proposals:

1) it should be specified that if the Public Integrity Council issues a negative conclusion regarding a candidate for the office of a judge, at least 16 votes of the members of the High Council of Justice out of 21 shall be required to appoint him/her to the office.

2) the Public Integrity Council should be empowered to initiate disciplinary proceedings, participate in them, and cooperate with the High Council of Justice on the issues concerning judges’ independence;

3) the clauses of the transitional provisions enabling the judges who had been appointed for five years and whose authorities had been terminated to run for the office again without taking part in a competition should be excluded; the judges ‘from the pool of Yanukovych’ who run for the offices shall not be exempt from taking a qualification exam and passing a special check.

Therefore, the RPR is convinced that should the draft law No. 5180 be adopted without any changes, prior achievements of the judicial reform with regard to the recruitment of new judges will be reduced to nothing. At the same time, if the Law “On the High Council of Judges” is not adopted, the activity of the Council will be blocked for a long time, so we call on the Parliament to finalize the draft law as soon as possible and to adopt a relevant law.