On anniversary of Maidan, Rada plans to adopt draft law that will destroy Civic Council of Integrity and threaten judicial reform, - DEJURE
The draft law destroys the tool for public participation in the selection and evaluation of judges.
This was reported by the DEJURE foundation, Censor.NET reports.
On the anniversary of the Revolution of Dignity, the Verkhovna Rada will consider draft law No. 10140-d from the head of the legal policy committee, Denys Maslov, and his colleagues. The foundation emphasized that the draft law destroys the tool for public participation in the selection and evaluation of judges.
Thus, the draft law proposes to exclude from the Law of Ukraine "On the Judiciary and the Status of Judges" Article 87, which defines the status and powers of the Public Integrity Council, which since 2016 has been helping the Higher Qualifications Commission of Judges to evaluate current judges and select new ones.
Instead, the People's Deputies want to make the PCI dependent on the High Qualifications Commission of Judges, complicate its activities, and limit its influence on the evaluation of judges, DEJURE explained.
"First of all, the parliamentarians propose to allow the HACC to terminate the powers of the members of the General Assembly. In this way, the public control body itself will find itself in a situation of easy control by the authorities — if you do not like the position of an individual member, you can simply remove him.
Secondly, the project contains a provision prohibiting the use of evaluative judgments in the conclusions of the State Audit Committee. However, the assessment of such a moral and ethical category as integrity is impossible without evaluative judgments. In addition, the PCI is governed by the "reasonable doubt by an outsider" standard of proof and has an advisory function rather than an indictment of judges to use a higher standard.
In the end, the deputies want to prohibit members of the PCI from giving a public assessment of the judge. For activists, this means the impossibility of communicating with society the results of their work and defending their decisions," the foundation noted.
Other regulations set excessive requirements for the operation of the gas turbine engine.
"For example, the authors of the draft law demand that the work of the Regional Development Committee be fully public, the Council announced the meeting in advance, provided the broadcast. However, the Regional Development Committee does not even have a single premises and consists of activists and journalists who live not only in Kyiv but also in other cities. Another example is that the project requires the State Administrative Court to check the winners of competitions for hundreds of positions in courts of first instance within 30 days. It is obvious that in such a short period a public body, for the operation of which the state does not allocate a single hryvnia, will not be able to qualitatively evaluate such several candidates.
In addition, there are simply many changes in the proposed project, the purpose of which is clear. For example, according to the authors, the PCI should consist of 25 members, five of whom should be appointed by the Council of Business Ombudsmen. At the same time, the current legislation does not limit business associations from participating in the formation of the body anyway, so why create a separate quota for them?" they emphasized.
In addition, the draft law proposes to complete the competitions for the positions of judges, which were started by the previous Supreme Court of Appeals, according to the old rules.
"We are talking about filling 560 positions with candidates who passed the competence and integrity check of the previous discredited staff of the Supreme Court of Justice. Let us remind you that this is the same stuff that failed to renew the judicial system. By 2019, out of about three thousand judges whom they "checked", less than one percent were fired," the foundation added, noting that the adoption of the draft law would harm Ukraine's movement towards the EU and called on them to "reject dangerous proposals and not destroy progress in the judiciary reform, which was not easy for Ukraine".
