Rumours that Ruslan Kravchenko might resign as Prosecutor General first surfaced on 12 December 2025. But he quickly denied them on his personal Facebook page and threatened: ‘I’ll come after each and every one of you myself.’ 

Less than a year later, Kravchenko submitted his resignation amid corruption scandals at the Prosecutor General’s Office. The Verkhovna Rada must now approve his dismissal. That is a remarkably swift end to his tenure, but it does not solve the core problems of the prosecution service — one side of the justice triangle.

This is not only about one criminal proceeding or the people involved in it. Operation ‘Carthage’ by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) exposed a much deeper institutional problem: over the past year, the prosecution service has become even more dependent on whoever happens to occupy the Prosecutor General’s office.

Ruslan Kravchenko’s work came under regular criticism from the outset. His priorities did not match the challenges of wartime, European integration reforms stalled and, in some areas, went into reverse, while ‘manual control’ and the appointment of unqualified people to managerial positions took hold across the prosecution service.

In that sense, ‘Carthage’ is only the tip of the iceberg. It showed how costly a system becomes when staffing decisions increasingly depend on the will of one leader rather than on professional competence, while internal safeguards weaken or disappear altogether.

After Kravchenko’s departure, Ukraine will therefore have to answer two questions at once. Who will be the next Prosecutor General? And what should be done with the system his successor will inherit — a system damaged under Kravchenko? As for what comes next for Ruslan Kravchenko himself, further SAPO materials may provide the answer.

The direction of the prosecution service under Kravchenko became clear almost immediately after his appointment. On 24 June 2025, with a single signature, he undid a year’s work by the prosecution service and international experts on a pilot project for selecting heads of prosecution offices, which envisaged a gradual shift towards competitive appointments. Kravchenko abolished the rules governing the personnel reserve for managerial positions in the prosecution service, just as the reserve was nearing completion. The reserve was no cure-all for staffing problems, of course. But it was meant to help move the system gradually from backroom recruitment towards transparent selection based on clear criteria of professional competence and integrity.

The scandal over prosecutors’ ‘fake’ disabilities was equally revealing. After taking office, Ruslan Kravchenko promised to get to the bottom of the scandal that had cost his predecessor, Andrii Kostin, his job in 2024. Rather than pursue criminal proceedings, the Prosecutor General simply sent complaints to the Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of Prosecutors (QDCP) and waited for the outcome. Unsurprisingly, that did not answer the central question — whether the disability statuses had been obtained unlawfully. To this day, the prosecutors have not been held criminally liable and have faced barely any disciplinary consequences: 80% of the disciplinary cases were simply closed, while the prosecutors continue to receive payments. Some lost managerial positions but stayed on as rank-and-file prosecutors. What is more, some have even had their disability status restored by courts after the notorious scandal. Kravchenko effectively stepped away from the problem, tried to shift responsibility onto an independent body and made their impunity all the more obvious.

The prosecution service under Kravchenko then moved towards an even more ‘manual’ model of management. Early in his tenure, he tried to justify simplified appointment procedures by citing a ‘staffing shortage’ in the prosecution service that he had simply invented. During the July 2025 attack on the anti-corruption bodies, Parliament adopted Law No. 4555-IX, which stripped the NABU and SAPO of their procedural independence. Investigative reporting points to Kravchenko’s active role in that move — and to the benefit he secured in return: the abolition of competitive selection for managerial positions in the prosecution service. After the protests, some provisions affecting the NABU and SAPO were amended. But the damaging changes to the prosecution service remained.

Competitive selection was suspended for the duration of martial law — since August 2025, anyone with a law degree can be appointed to a position in the Prosecutor General’s Office or a regional prosecutor’s office. The Prosecutor General’s procedural powers were expanded, further strengthening his influence over all prosecutors. He can now issue instructions directly to an investigator, bypassing the prosecutor handling the case, and call in particular criminal proceedings for review, effectively freezing them.

The restrictions lawmakers had sought to impose on the NABU and SAPO were instead left in place for other law enforcement bodies and the prosecution service. In practice, the Prosecutor General can therefore interfere in cases handled, for example, by the Economic Security Bureau of Ukraine and the National Police of Ukraine, whether to pursue his own ideas or to defend other political interests.

Institutional reforms of the prosecution service — competitive selection for managerial positions, rather than only rank-and-file posts, stronger prosecutorial self-governance, random allocation of criminal proceedings, a new evaluation system and improvements to disciplinary procedures — were effectively put on hold under Kravchenko.

By contrast, the Prosecutor General made the protection of children’s rights his priority. The Prosecutor General’s Office began assigning heads of regional and district prosecution offices to personally prosecute high-profile cases involving murders and rapes of children, even though they were less familiar with the cases than the prosecutors who had handled them from the outset. The prosecution service also sought broader powers to coordinate other state bodies in the field of child protection. Experts saw two risks in this practice: a gradual return to the Soviet-totalitarian concept of ‘general supervision’, which Ukraine had moved away from through earlier reforms, and the replacement of specialised juvenile prosecutors by administrative managers.

Ukraine, meanwhile, lost an entire year of prosecution reform and, worse, has left the next Prosecutor General with an even weaker starting position. Kravchenko bears direct responsibility for this backsliding — something that has surprised even European bureaucrats. In meetings with international partners, he said one thing and did the opposite.

Until August 2025, the only way to become a prosecutor was through a competition administered by the QDCP. Only then could prosecutors ‘move up’ through the system. Those already in the system had undergone that kind of vetting. That meant it was impossible simply to bring ‘your own’ person straight into the Prosecutor General’s Office, and putting them through a competition was cumbersome. Law No. 4555-IX removed precisely this demanding entry route into the profession. Kravchenko made active use of the opportunities it created.

Under the new rules, for example, Serhii Kropyva joined the Prosecutor General’s Office in August 2025. A former cyber police official and deputy head of the Odesa Regional Military Administration, he was appointed to a managerial position in the Department of International Cooperation without an open competition. What is more, he had never previously served as a prosecutor.

According to experts at the Agency for Legislative Initiatives, under the new rules more than a thousand people entered the system without competitive selection or a prior competitive assessment of their professional competence and integrity. Kravchenko personally ‘reshuffled’ the prosecution service’s leadership, undermining the quality of management.

That is why simply restoring the old rules is no longer enough. Ukraine will also have to change management practices and scrutinise the staffing decisions made over the past year.

Kravchenko is leaving, but his appointees remain — and they are the ones running the prosecution service. They have largely shaped the institution’s public image over the past year. But the prosecution service is part of the justice system, and Kravchenko does not represent all prosecutors.

A crisis or political turbulence at the very top should not cast a shadow over the institution as a whole, or over the thousands of prosecutors who continue to do their jobs conscientiously.

Many competent, high-integrity professionals remain in the system. Under Kravchenko, however, some were pushed to the margins of management decision-making, while others left the prosecution service altogether. These are the people who should be leading the prosecution service, including by serving on prosecutorial self-governance bodies that should develop in line with European standards. In a democratic state, the prosecution service is not a ‘law enforcement body’ built around a rigid executive chain of command. It is an important part of the justice system, which guarantees a degree of independence for both judges and prosecutors. Their decisions are dictated by law, not by superiors. At the same time, self-governance decentralises the system, limits the powers of heads of prosecution offices, including the Prosecutor General, and protects prosecutors from unlawful pressure, above all political pressure.

Judging the entire institution solely through the actions or inaction of its head means ignoring the reality on the ground and devaluing the work of those who continue to ensure the fair administration of justice.

For the system to work effectively and remain resilient regardless of who holds the office of Prosecutor General, it is critical to focus on far-reaching institutional reforms.

First, Ukraine needs to repeal the damaging provisions of Law No. 4555-IX and restore transparent competitive selection at every level of the prosecution service. The prosecutorial corps should be formed on the basis of professional competence, integrity and meritocracy, not loyalty to the leadership. In addition, effective prosecutorial self-governance should become the foundation of an independent prosecution service. Its bodies must become genuine collective bodies rather than nominal appendages to the chain of command, capable of protecting prosecutors’ procedural independence from administrative pressure and ensuring fair disciplinary procedures. Ukraine must also deliver on its EU commitments  a new evaluation system, random allocation of criminal proceedings, improved disciplinary procedures and other reforms.

The staffing decisions of the past year also require separate attention. There is no lawful way simply to dismiss prosecutors appointed during this period. Heads appointed without competitive procedures should face heightened scrutiny both from internal control units within the prosecution service and from law enforcement bodies more broadly.

There is another problem with appointing a new Prosecutor General: time. After Andrii Kostin resigned in autumn 2024, the president spent another eight months looking for a successor. As we can now see, that lengthy search can hardly be called a success.

The same transitional period could recur. By law, in the Prosecutor General’s absence, their powers are exercised by the First Deputy Prosecutor General or, if there is no first deputy, by one of the deputies.

At present, First Deputy Prosecutor General Mariia Vdovychenko features in covert recordings from Operation ‘Carthage’ and, according to journalists, was preparing a fresh attack on the anti-corruption bodies. On 8 September, Vdovychenko submitted her resignation, so under the allocation of duties, the role passes to Deputy Prosecutor General Maksym Krym.

At the same time, appointing the next Prosecutor General under the current closed procedure would effectively take Ukraine straight back to the point where the Kravchenko story began.

Ukraine therefore needs a transitional solution. Its task is much simpler: to prevent another candidate who lacks competence and integrity from being appointed Prosecutor General while a new permanent model is not yet in place.

But can the president do this alone? Probably not. The voice of the professional community matters too, as do the support and trust of those in the profession who will ultimately have to work with this person. An assessment by that community would allow the public to see who the candidate is, what experience they have and whether they meet integrity standards. That would make the process clearer and more transparent and help build trust. The president should therefore submit prospective nominees for an assessment of competence and integrity before formally nominating one to Parliament.

One possible mechanism would be preliminary screening of candidates by the existing Ethics Council. It assesses candidates for the High Council of Justice (HCJ) against the criteria of professional ethics and integrity. The Ethics Council has six members: three judges or retired judges nominated by the Council of Judges of Ukraine and three international experts. It is an existing institutional framework with experience in reviewing asset declarations and information from state registers and open sources, as well as assessing reputational risks and professional ethics. It has been operating since 2022.

In the future, this function should be performed by a reformed Council of Prosecutors of Ukraine or through a new competitive procedure, depending on the model Ukraine chooses after consultations with the Venice Commission.

Involving the Ethics Council at this stage would therefore be a bridge towards depoliticising the procedure for appointing the Prosecutor General. It would buy Ukraine more time to carry out the longer-term reform properly.

For several years, the European Union has been urging Ukraine to reduce political influence over the appointment of the Prosecutor General. The European Commission explicitly requires Ukraine to depoliticise the procedure for selecting and dismissing the Prosecutor General and make it transparent and merit-based, with the involvement of the prosecutorial corps.

Ukraine currently has several ways to meet these EU requirements. One is an open competition involving international experts. MPs registered the relevant Draft Law No. 15343 in Parliament in June 2026.

Another model envisages a greater role for the professional community and a reformed Council of Prosecutors of Ukraine in the preliminary assessment of candidates. The Agency for Legislative Initiatives has already analysed both approaches and their constitutional risks in detail, because the Constitution of Ukraine cannot be amended under martial law.

The problem now is not that Ukraine has to choose between these models within a few days. It is that neither of them can start working immediately. Each option requires legislative amendments, their implementation, the establishment of the necessary bodies, the launch of the relevant procedures and, ultimately, the selection itself.

Permanent rules and procedures are needed for years to come. A Prosecutor General is needed now.

Lawyers have a long-standing joke: ‘Crime is organised, but you are not.’ Events of the past few days have added an entirely unfunny reality to that joke — one of ‘systematised corruption’ that the Office of the President apparently wants, at the very least, to ‘control’ and, better still, to ‘lead’.

These were the messages Ukrainians heard on the morning of 19 August in the latest recordings concerning high-level corruption. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) then launched a special operation ‘to expose a criminal organisation led by current and former Members of Parliament, involving high-ranking officials from the Office of the President of Ukraine and other individuals’.

Over the following two days, videos appeared containing transcripts of recorded conversations involving members of the criminal organisation. Among those named by SAPO prosecutors were Maksym Mykytas, a former MP and businessman who headed Ukrbud and is now involved in a number of high-profile criminal proceedings; Vadym Stolar, a current MP from the banned Opposition Platform – For Life (OPFL) and a businessman with long-standing interests in Kyiv real estate and property development; Iryna Mudra, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine from March 2024 to August 2026, who had previously served as Deputy Minister of Justice of Ukraine; Viktor Dubovyk, Director General of the Directorate for Legal Policy at the Office of the President, who until 2024 headed the Anti-Raiding Office of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine; several officials of Sense Bank JSC, as well as a number of less well-known individuals holding less senior positions. The names of several Ministry of Justice officials were also mentioned.

The published recordings point to the alleged influence of members of the criminal organisation over the Ministry of Justice, the courts and Sense Bank, as well as schemes involving money laundering and corporate raiding against companies owned by third parties, including the use of forged documents. It has all the flavour of the 1990s, except that this is 2026. Hackers have therefore been added to the list as well.

Mykytas, Mudra, Valentyn Yelizarov — Mykytas’s right-hand man — and Dubovyk have already been remanded in custody, with alternative bail set at UAH 30 million, UAH 20 million, UAH 20 million and UAH 7 million respectively.

The High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) will give a legal assessment of the published recordings in accordance with the applicable procedural rules. Given, however, that Iryna Mudra and Viktor Dubovyk had been responsible for judicial reform at the Office of the President since March 2024, we will examine where these figures have taken Ukraine over the past two and a half years. More importantly, what should happen next?

In March 2024, after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed Andrii Smirnov, who had served as Deputy Head of the Office of the President, Iryna Mudra was appointed to the position. Almost immediately afterwards, NABU and SAPO notified Smirnov of suspicion of illicit enrichment. The criminal proceedings against him were later expanded to include allegations of laundering illegally acquired funds and offering a bribe.

Mudra was notified of suspicion before being dismissed from office, placing the Presidential Office in a very delicate position. Both deputy heads, who were supposed to uphold the rule of law, are now experiencing the criminal justice system first-hand. They also have the opportunity to greet one another on the steps of the HACC, just as two other well-known defendants, Vsevolod Kniaziev and Pavlo Vovk, recently did.

Yet in March 2024 it was difficult to imagine anyone less connected to the judiciary than Mudra taking up the position of Deputy Head of the Presidential Office responsible for this area. After Smirnov, who had not dealt with judicial reform at all, the position required someone with genuine expertise. That was precisely why Mudra’s appointment created tension.

At the same time, her lack of knowledge and connections in this sphere also gave some hope that there would be no networks of control over the judiciary of the kind that Vovk, Smirnov, Kniaziev and, to some extent, Oleh Tatarov had already tried to build at national level. At regional level, almost every president of an appellate court has a similar network of their own.

So when, in one of her first public appearances, Mudra said that she sorted judges into ‘baskets’ — those vetted by the new compositions of the High Council of Justice (HCJ) and the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine (HQCJ), and those inherited from the old compositions of those bodies — the judicial system erupted. This was an obvious breach of safeguards for judicial independence and undisguised interference by a political body in the judicial appointment procedure, and it reinforced the behind-the-scenes view that Mudra was an accidental choice for the position.

The same applied to Viktor Dubovyk. Yet it was precisely the two of them who were expected to develop a new reform strategy for the judiciary, since the strategy for the previous period had failed on every count.

A brief digression is warranted here to recall once again that, following the 2016 constitutional amendments on justice, the President was left with almost no powers over the judiciary. The President retains a ceremonial role in appointing judges and swearing them in. The Venice Commission has repeatedly stressed that this role should indeed remain ceremonial, without sorting judges into ‘baskets’ or otherwise interfering with the powers of the HCJ.

The President also has the power to appoint two HCJ members and, following consultations with the HCJ, to submit draft laws to Parliament on the establishment, reorganisation and liquidation of courts. During Zelenskyy’s presidency, we have already seen examples of this: the liquidation of the notorious District Administrative Court of Kyiv (DACK) and the establishment of other courts in its place — one to consider administrative cases involving Kyiv residents and two more to hear high-profile cases concerning central executive authorities. The HQCJ is currently selecting new judges for all of them.

Historically, however, the Office of the President has retained a tradition, dating back to previous Presidents, of defining the strategy for judicial reform. While that may once have been justified by the President’s formerly broad powers, after the 2016 constitutional reform — which was assessed quite positively by the Council of Europe in its 2019 report — such strategies should arguably be developed by the HCJ, following consultations with the Supreme Court (SC). The HCJ is, after all, the constitutional body of judicial governance, modelled on the higher judicial councils that exist in most countries whose reform experience may also be useful for Ukraine.

Perhaps this is why, when Mudra and Dubovyk began working on yet another version of the Strategy for the Development of the Justice System and Constitutional Court Proceedings, the process repeatedly reached a dead end. Initially, this was because the first version of the document was weak and, in many respects, misguided and harmful, forcing the Presidential Office, both officially and behind the scenes, to turn to the judiciary itself for help in developing well-founded proposals for the necessary changes. Later, even a relatively sensible document remained on the President’s desk for a year and a half without any explanation of what exactly Volodymyr Zelenskyy found unacceptable in it.

After yet another failure to secure the President’s signature on the relevant decree, Mudra publicly stated that the Strategy’s non-approval did not prevent its implementation. Yet even the draft submitted to the President has not been made public. It is rather difficult to implement something that does not formally exist. There must be approved indicators, deadlines, responsible actors and all the other elements that distinguish reform from PR about reform. But defining those indicators, and above all being able to monitor implementation, requires real powers — either through a legislative framework or through a power vertical. As we have already established, following the 2016 reform the President, and therefore the Presidential Office, has almost none. That leaves only one option: building a power vertical.

In light of recent events, it is becoming clearer what the Presidential Office’s ‘reformers’ were actually doing. First, there were attempts to place their own people in key public positions. But with the Presidential Office having long since run out of a reserve bench, Viktor Dubovyk personally entered most competitions for top positions. Owing to the principled stance of representatives of international partners — with three such representatives currently sitting on each of the relevant selection commissions — he failed to secure any of them.

Second, Mudra and Dubovyk appear to have tried to use their positions to influence individual court decisions. Serhii Stasiuk, a judge of the Commercial Court of Kyiv, whose name was mentioned during the hearing on the preventive measure for Maksym Mykytas, proved to be far from the last judge to be named.

During the hearing on the preventive measure for Valentyn Yelizarov, the names of judges Pavlo Horbasenko of the Northern Commercial Court of Appeal, Roman Boiko of the Commercial Court of Kyiv, Serhii Narizhnyi of the Commercial Court of Kyiv Region, Anatolii Ivchenko of the Commercial Court of Kyiv and Olena Kuzmyshyna of the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal were also mentioned.

Admittedly, while Stasiuk, Boiko, Ivchenko, Narizhnyi and Horbasenko were mentioned in the context of decisions in specific cases, Kuzmyshyna simply ‘didn’t get a scarf’, even though she had invited Mudra to her birthday celebration, where ‘all the court presidents’ were supposed to be present.

During the hearing on the preventive measure for Iryna Mudra, conversations between Mudra and Mykytas were read out in which she said: ‘I got him the ruling’ and ‘the appeal was fully upheld; we changed the bankruptcy practice’.

We are likely to learn the names of at least some judges of the Pecherskyi District Court of Kyiv as well, most of whom have been obstructing the qualification assessment of their suitability for office. Attempts by the current HQCJ to conduct that assessment ended with searches by the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) and pressure on the HQCJ from the Temporary Investigative Commission associated with Serhii Vlasenko and Maksym Buzhanskyi.

Some courts were also searched, but it is for NABU and SAPO to decide whether and when to make that information public.

Third, our own sources have told us about informal contacts between Mudra and certain representatives of the HCJ and HQCJ. If those discussions concerned the reform Strategy or deadlines for the judiciary to fulfil particular international commitments, there is no problem. But if Mudra or Dubovyk mentioned specific names or expressed wishes during those meetings — for example, regarding the appointment of particular individuals to specific judicial positions — then there is a serious problem. That would amount to unlawful influence on decisions of judicial governance bodies, which those bodies should have reported.

Fourth, in one of the recorded conversations, a voice resembling Mudra’s can be heard saying that corruption should not be fought but rather ‘systematised and controlled’. Coming from a person whose responsibilities included building a rule-of-law system in Ukraine, this sounds like a verdict not only on her, but on the very existence of a dedicated Deputy Head of the Presidential Office responsible for the judiciary.

Yet this is not only about particular words. There are also concrete actions that are easy to see if one looks closely: President Zelenskyy’s decrees appointing judges. Most such decrees in recent years have been INDIVIDUAL. Under Poroshenko — and even Yanukovych — individual decrees existed but were more the exception than the rule. Under Zelenskyy, individual decrees have become the norm.

Naturally, no one in the Presidential Office was prepared to take such risks in competitions such as the one for the High Anti-Corruption Court. Judges vetted by international experts could quite easily have reported offers of personal contact with representatives of the Presidential Office. The President’s decrees appointing judges to the HACC and its Appeal Chamber are therefore collective decrees, even though HCJ submissions concerning those judges reached the Presidential Office at different times.

By contrast, the 13 presidential decrees appointing first-instance and appellate judges, signed on the same day as the decrees concerning HACC judges, were individual. More interesting still, not every appointment submission resulted in a decree. In some appellate courts, for example, decrees appointing one or two judges were not signed. What prevented all of them from being appointed? One might try to explain this by saying that it was impossible to process all the submissions at once. But there is a catch: the unsigned decrees concern judges whose appointment submissions were among the first to reach the Presidential Office.

For example, the HCJ considers candidates for a particular appellate court over the course of a month and sends appointment submissions to the Presidential Office as each candidate is considered. Yet, strangely, submissions concerning the last candidates are acted upon before those concerning the first. Administratively and technically, this is impossible, because documents are processed in the order in which they arrive. So, for a document to stop moving inside the Presidential Office, somebody has to halt it manually at some stage, according to the principle of who ‘made it through’ and who ‘didn’t’.

In one of the conversations recorded by NABU, Mykytas said that he knew how Andrii Portnov had ‘kept judges in line’: by issuing or withholding appointment decrees. He summed it up as follows: ‘Whoever got to her got released; whoever didn’t is still running.’

Other recorded conversations appear to confirm this as well. One example is a conversation between Mykytas and Mudra on 19 February.

Mudra: Why are you so hung up on Horbasenko? What, do you want to bribe him or something?

Mykytas: Yeah, yeah, there is. I’ll tell you later. Vasya and Vadym really pushed for it. Well, he did them a favour. They really asked. Fine.

Mudra: Could we make it so that he owes me, not Vasya and Vadym?

Mykytas: Sure. That’s basically how it is. He owes you too. Trust me. He owes you… He’s ready to come and bow to you, even get down on his knees. That’s why I asked you to invite him, so he could swear his loyalty to you again.

As the SAPO prosecutor explained, Judge Horbasenko intended to transfer to an appellate court, and Mudra was facilitating the transfer.

Mykytas: Well, Tuesday then. It’s fine, she’ll let him through… But he shouldn’t forget about her, you know.

Astion: Just think of him as her guy — and ours too. One signal and he’ll do exactly what he’s told…

Mykytas: Is he going to the Kyiv appeal court?

Astion: Well, he’s got a job to do there. He’s got people there who are on the same wavelength. He wants to build up the Barsuk–Khripun connection in a big way. That’s in our interests too. So, yeah, he’ll be coordinated. 

In another conversation, Mykytas says: ‘She’s just letting them through as a batch, by Tuesday. She’s doing them as a batch. She says, “I can’t just let one person out of the whole batch.” She’s holding some of them back — around 30 people.’

On Tuesday, 24 February 2026, President Zelenskyy appointed 26 judges. Among them was Pavlo Horbasenko, appointed as a judge of the Northern Commercial Court of Appeal. Judging from the context, Mudra had been holding decrees concerning 30 judges and released 26 of them; four judges had ‘failed to make it through’ to her.

Another recorded conversation worth noting concerns Mudra’s predecessor, Andrii Smirnov, who also communicated with Horbasenko in relation to Mykytas’s cases.

Astion: Andriukha spoke to Horbasenko this morning.

Mykytas: You mean Smirnov?

Astion: Smirnov, yeah. He spoke to Horbasenko. I’ve got the first instance covered, and this judge or whoever… He went to Pasha Horbasenko and said, ‘Pasha, look, this one’s important. You need to put this guy in his place…’ And Horbasenko came down hard on Boiko, even though Boiko was actually trying to help me in that situation… And now, through Pasha, we’ve sorted out all your issues.

In other words, Smirnov, whose criminal case is being heard by the HACC, continues in his spare time between court hearings to ‘fix little problems for businessmen’ with judges.

There is no simple choice between two pills: choose the red one and corruption continues; choose the blue one and it comes to an end. But there are some mechanisms from recent years that have actually proved effective.

First and foremost, despite all the complexity and difficulties involved in engaging international experts in competitions for key public positions, there is currently simply no alternative if Ukraine wants to select competent people of integrity.

The number of MPs notified of suspicion by NABU and SAPO is measured in dozens. The number of judges, advocates and prosecutors is measured in dozens. The number of senior managers in the executive branch is measured in dozens. The number of Presidential Office officials is now measured in dozens too. And some of them have also tried to place their own people in key public positions.

Allowing selection commissions to operate at this stage without international experts — or Ukrainian experts delegated by international partners — would allow corrupt power verticals to reproduce themselves and even extend their influence into newly created institutions.

International experts with a decisive vote should remain involved in key selection commissions at least until Ukraine joins the European Union.

It is also extremely important to regulate how far back candidate vetting should go. Younger candidates now taking part in competitions often find it very difficult to obtain documents confirming their parents’ property acquired or received in the 1990s, when the candidate was, at best, still at school and, at worst, not yet born. Moldova, for example, has limited judicial vetting to the previous 12 years and considers this sufficient. Ukraine could follow that example, or set a period of 15–18 years for candidates under 45 and 20–22 years for older candidates.

The second, equally important change is that the Office of the President should finally abolish the position of Deputy Head responsible for the judiciary and end attempts to influence judges or use them within its own power verticals.

The law provides that the President must appoint judges within 30 days of receiving an HCJ submission. In practice, this should mean that once a month a single decree is submitted to the President for signature, listing all judges whose appointment submissions reached the Presidential Office during the previous 30 days. Two competent lawyers are sufficient to prepare such a document.

The development and implementation of the Strategy for the Reform and Development of the Judiciary should be left to the HCJ and the SC. After all, under the Constitution they are the institutions with the relevant powers concerning both judicial independence and the unity of case law.

When the President addresses the development of a new network of local general courts, he can establish an ordinary working group to prepare proposals and turn them into a draft law. This is not something that has to be done every month, but perhaps once every 20 or 30 years. The need to liquidate or establish an individual additional court can readily be identified by the HCJ, which can then submit the relevant proposal to the President.

The President and the Head of his Office could then say calmly on international platforms: we do not put pressure on the courts; we simply appoint judges on time and swear them in once a quarter. That would be preferable to having to make excuses for deputy heads responsible for the judiciary who, for more than six years, have tried to use this position for their own unlawful interests. And, as Smirnov’s example shows, even dismissal from office did not end his corrupt links with judges.

This could start immediately by signing all the decrees that have been awaiting the President’s signature for anything from several weeks to several years. No sorting judges into ‘baskets’ of the loyal and disloyal, no calls to presidents of appellate courts asking which judges should be held back without a decree and no requests to resolve particular court cases.

Third, once the competitions for appellate courts and the most heavily burdened first-instance courts are completed, the HQCJ should focus on finishing the qualification assessment that has been dragging on since 2017. This is necessary so that first-instance judges who have successfully dodged assessment for almost ten years finally either pass it — or fail it — or leave the judicial system of their own accord. Most judges of the ‘Pechera’ may well resign of their own accord if they know that assessment really awaits them tomorrow, rather than another favour from their ‘friends’ in the form of, say, yet another ‘urgent’ search of the HQCJ.

It is perfectly natural for any political authority to want controllable courts and pliant judges. Every decision it makes may, at some stage, need the support of a court. That is where stories come from in which some judges are approached with requests and allowed to pocket ‘ten’, while others receive a scarf as a birthday present so that a loyal judge is available for the next steps.

The only possible ‘windows of opportunity’ for separating the political and judicial power verticals are situations such as the one we have today.

The first choice now lies with the courts: will presidents of appellate and cassation courts and members of the HQCJ and HCJ begin running to the new deputy heads and department heads appointed by Zelenskyy or the Head of the Presidential Office? The second choice lies with Zelenskyy himself: he has to decide whether the prospect of future elections is a more attractive carrot than another attempt to build corrupt links with the courts by appointing a new deputy, or through Tatarov, who still works in the Presidential Office. A story about corporate raiding by a criminal organisation that includes officials of the Office of the President is a story about losing an election, whenever that election eventually takes place. That is true regardless of whether the President knew what Mudra and Dubovyk were doing right under his nose. For a President, competence and integrity are equally important values.

Ukraine’s information space resembles the interlocking time loops of Christopher Nolan’s film ‘Tenet’, with one storyline giving way to another before the previous one has time to end. A change of Government with nol public explanation of the reasons for it, new appointments, protests, a lack of dialogue at every level, interviews, political statements, discussions about elections and corruption scandals pile up so quickly that individual events almost lose their contours or pass unnoticed. Each new story seems decisive for the country’s future for a few days, only to be displaced almost immediately by the next one.

In this torrent, it is very easy to lose one’s sense of stability: the human brain simply cannot process the sheer volume of information, so it seeks simplification and looks for magic pills. This is where mythmaking begins. Not necessarily as outright fabrication, but rather as a way of reducing complex realities to a comprehensible image, or a set of images, that creates a sense of order and stability. A multitude of causes is replaced by a single one. Specific names and personalisation take the place of institutions and sound bureaucratic processes. A series of complex, multi-layered processes is reduced to one decision. Uncertainty is replaced by the promise of a universal remedy or a hero-saviour. This creates the belief that this particular person will finally transform or fix ‘the system’, that one institution is enough to defeat corruption, for example, or that one particular reform or the adoption of a draft law will solve a problem that others have been unable to resolve for years. In the short term, such a construct can indeed be reassuring, because it restores the feeling that chaos can be ordered and explained. As though there were a loose end somewhere that only needs to be pulled to unravel the entire knot.

Unfortunately, political reality almost never lives up to such expectations. For years, names, parties, slogans and structures have changed in Ukrainian politics, while the roles we ask them to play change far less often. Or, rather, what changes far less often is the mythical image of a father or saviour whom we, as a society, keep searching for and whom each of us imagines differently. It may be the role of a strong steward, a powerful commander-in-chief, a reformer, a convincing activist, an effective manager, a reliable volunteer or someone who will restore order and punish those responsible. Preferably all at once — anything to keep the state machinery functioning properly and steadily. Season after season, political figures try on these ready-made images, while society tests whether this time the person will finally live up to the expected archetype of ‘perfection’.

Finding that kind of combination is almost impossible. So, when reality falls short of the expected image, we often begin, unconsciously, to build a myth around it. We attribute qualities to a person that they have not yet had the chance to demonstrate, capacity to an institution that it does not possess and consequences to decisions that they may not be able to guarantee or deliver. Gradually, reality gives way to the myth we have created. We assess not what is actually in front of us, but what it would have to become to satisfy our need for order, predictability and a sense that the situation is under control. And the greater the distance between this construct and reality, the sharper and even more painful the collision between expectations and reality becomes — especially when the trust invested in it ultimately proves misplaced.

One decision or position that contradicts commonly accepted rules, beliefs or preferences — and society reverses its attitude by 180 degrees, calling into question almost everything that a particular person or institution had done before. This is not because a particular decision cannot or should not be criticised. On the contrary, political maturity requires criticism. But if one decision brings down the entire previous construct, that is a sign that we had invested in a myth rather than assessed the reality before us.

Modern political myths are powerful and, at the same time, extraordinarily fragile. Today, a few decisions approved by the majority, effective public communication and the reputation of a person or institution that is ‘finally doing things differently’ may be enough for a myth to take shape. Nor is this always solely a product of public imagination. The myth of an effective manager, a wise administrator or a progressive institution may itself be a consciously constructed mask. It is a quick way to gain support, trust or political capital in pursuit of personal ambitions and objectives that are often at odds with the public interest.

At the same time, the very speed at which myths emerge is what makes them vulnerable. They often fail when confronted with contradictions, mistakes, conflicts of interest and the real limits of influence. The more we have idealised an image, the stronger the temptation to explain away discrepancies with reality in order to protect it. This is why it can sometimes be difficult to identify exactly where the myth begins to diverge from reality and why. Sometimes it really is an honest mistake, or the expected results fail to materialise because of unforeseen external factors. At other times, however, it is because something entirely different was hidden behind the mythical mask from the outset.

The same applies to political decisions. In a state of constant instability, the temptation to find a simple answer that will explain and solve most problems is particularly strong. A change of Government, for example, might be expected to reboot the state. Or a new minister is assumed certain to reform an entire sector. Perhaps dismissing one particular person is enough to make an institution independent. Or elections are presented as a way to renew the authorities and ease social tensions. Each of these instruments may be necessary in particular circumstances, but the risk arises when one possible instrument is turned into a panacea and becomes part of political mythmaking.

Simple, universal solutions look especially attractive in such circumstances. At first glance, they create a sense of clarity and control: if a particular approach or procedure has worked somewhere, surely it is enough simply to replicate it everywhere. This gives rise to the mythical idea of a solution that can be applied to almost anything, with little regard for differences in environments, functions, resources, institutional culture or the socio-political context. But in politics, one size fits all almost never works. Copying an approach does not guarantee a result and usually ignores the very factor on which success depends: context.

Real solutions are usually less attractive. They may be complex, multi-layered, slow and politically unpopular. Nor do they promise rapid results, and they almost never fit into a single elegant formula. This is particularly true in Ukraine, where institutional problems are compounded by war, resource constraints and legislative and security restrictions, meaning that solutions are rarely linear.

Political myth gravitates towards grand images, while democracy rests on smaller and sometimes even boring details: rules for appointments and dismissals, parliamentary oversight, a professional civil service, independent bodies capable of scrutinising those in power while themselves acting within established rules and the law, courts that are not dependent on the interests of those in authority and adherence to procedure. Institutions themselves rarely look bright or spectacular, because their function is to provide a foundation that allows the state to keep working despite human imperfection. The strength of that foundation depends, among other things, on mutual respect, the ability to cooperate, to share responsibility and to recognise the limits of one’s own role.

We should value talent and integrity, as well as every person whom the current system has squeezed out of public administration. Such people are rare, and many of them were indeed among the best. Their lack of loyalty to the system was often precisely why they were pushed out. At the same time, this is also a consequence of our own short-sightedness: as a society, we do not always assess the qualities and results that really matter but instead follow media trends or the support of particular activist groups which, let us be honest, are hardly beyond reproach themselves. We will all have to acknowledge many mistakes that we have made together.

At its core, the point is simple: we need to be able to recognise the competence and strength of others and let them move ahead, giving them room to act and, at times, even stepping aside ourselves. That requires a great deal of self-assurance, maturity and ethical balance.

True resilience is not one face or one surname. It is not a single point holding up the entire state, but a framework made up of many supports. Those supports are unquestionably people: the military and the home front, public officials and MPs, communities, representatives of law enforcement, civil society, journalists, judges and many others. At the same time, for these supports to endure, the people behind them must be backed by strong institutions, rules and procedures. That is what enables a system not to collapse every time someone makes a mistake, proves unworthy of their role or simply drops out of it.

The more reliable this framework becomes, the less need there is to compensate for instability with political myths. Myths take root particularly easily where real institutional foundations are lacking: then we want to believe in at least something as the one point capable of holding everything together. Myths survive for as long as we keep feeding them with our expectations. That is why it is useful, from time to time, to ask questions first of ourselves. To what extent is my view actually my own, rather than the product of other people’s moods and interpretations or the influence of the information environment? Do I change my position when new facts emerge? Or do I instead force those facts into a picture I have already constructed? Can I separate my personal sympathy or dislike for someone from my assessment of their actions?

This ability to reflect critically on our own views is itself part of political maturity. It begins when we stop needing myths to believe in the viability of our own state, despite all the complexity and trauma of reality.

Following public discussions and several scandals surrounding the drafts of the Anti-Corruption Strategy for 2026–2030 (ACS), deliberations in key parliamentary committees and comments received from state institutions, Members of Parliament registered a revised draft anti-corruption policy document — Draft Law No. 15230-d. It takes into account the conclusions of committees of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (VRU), comments by the Main Scientific and Expert Department (MSED) of the VRU and other comments on the previous draft laws. The document also incorporates the interim benchmarks (IBMs) for Cluster 1 ‘Fundamentals of the Accession Process’.

According to the explanatory note to Draft Law No. 15230-d, the main provisions that have strengthened the revised draft ACS include:

1. cross-cutting alignment of the draft with the provisions of the Rule of Law Roadmap and the interim benchmarks for Cluster 1 ‘Fundamentals of the Accession Process’;
2. supplementing the Preamble with the principles underpinning the Strategy, which will help preserve its vision for the future;
3. supplementing the problem related to the identification, tracing and management of assets derived from corruption and other crimes;
4. supplementing subsection 2.1 (Judiciary and the Status of Judges) with the fundamental problem of financial support for the judiciary and transferring to this subsection the problem of the institutional resilience and capacity of the High Anti-Corruption Court;
5. systemic improvement of provisions in the areas of taxation and customs;
6. including corruption-related issues in the strategically important forestry sector in the draft;
7. revising subsection 2.16 (Education and Science) as a foundation for fostering Ukraine’s human and innovation capital.

The Anti-Corruption Strategy is a document that defines the principles and priorities of state anti-corruption policy for the next five years. It is developed by the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) and adopted by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. The Strategy should be based on a systemic analysis of the corruption situation and the results of implementing the previous strategy. Subsequently, to implement the ACS, the Government develops and approves a clear action plan — the State Anti-Corruption Programme.

This is Ukraine’s third strategic anti-corruption policy document. The first strategy was approved on 14 October 2014 for the period until the end of 2017. The next strategy covered 2021–2025, but the relevant law was adopted by Parliament only in June 2022. As a result, only three years effectively remained to achieve the expected results. The State Anti-Corruption Programme for 2023–2025 has been partially implemented and remains in force until a new one is approved.

In May, three draft laws on the principles of state anti-corruption policy for 2026–2030 were registered in the Verkhovna Rada (Draft Law No. 15230, Draft Law No. 15230-1 and Draft Law No. 15230-2). ALI published its expert analysis of some of the differences between them and recommendations on the most appropriate ways to improve anti-corruption policy.

Following revision of these draft laws by the Committee on Anti-Corruption Policy, a decision was taken (pursuant to Part 2 Article 110 of the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Rules of Procedure of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine’) to submit the revised version of the Anti-Corruption Strategy to Parliament for consideration. An analysis of its key provisions is provided below.

The list of problems previously identified in this area remains unchanged. As in the previous versions, it is proposed, among other things, to clarify the grounds for holding persons authorised to perform the functions of the state or local self-government disciplinarily liable.

Some expected strategic results have undergone significant changes. Thus, previous versions of the ACS envisaged that, following legislative amendments, a person could be held disciplinarily liable if, in particular, a court found the corruption-related administrative offence committed by that person to be minor or closed the case because the time limit for imposing an administrative penalty had expired. We have already noted that such an approach may lead to a violation of the presumption of innocence.

The revised version of the ACS no longer contains these grounds. It retains the provision that public servants are held disciplinarily liable on the basis of a final court decision holding the person administratively liable for a corruption-related administrative offence.

Pursuant to Part 2 Article 65-1 of the Law of Ukraine ‘On Prevention of Corruption’, an official who has committed a corruption offence or a corruption-related offence is subject to disciplinary liability where the court has not imposed on that person a penalty or sanction in the form of deprivation of the right to hold certain positions or engage in certain activities related to the performance of state or local self-government functions.

In the Criminal Code of Ukraine (CC of Ukraine) and the Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offences (CUAO), deprivation of this right is defined as an additional penalty/sanction. Therefore, it is the court that, having assessed all the circumstances of the case, imposes the principal penalty or sanction (usually a fine) and may also impose an additional penalty/sanction where this is provided for by the sanction of the relevant article of the CC of Ukraine or the CUAO.

If the relevant article does not provide for such an additional penalty/sanction, or if the court has not imposed it, a disciplinary sanction should be imposed on the person.

The ACS proposes expanding the list of grounds for holding public servants disciplinarily liable for violations of anti-corruption legislation. ALI experts believe that such legislative amendments will not resolve the existing problem but, on the contrary, will exacerbate it (problem 1.9.1).

The brief description of this problem states that its causes include, in particular:

• imperfect legislation on the disciplinary liability of public servants and its inconsistency with anti-corruption legislation;
• failure by managers and bodies authorised to impose disciplinary liability to apply the above-mentioned provisions of Article 65-1 of the Law of Ukraine ‘On Prevention of Corruption’.

If laws establish that a separate ground for holding public servants disciplinarily liable is the entry into force of a court decision holding them administratively liable for committing a corruption-related offence, this is unlikely to affect the practice of applying disciplinary sanctions. Therefore, achieving this strategic result will not resolve the problem.

At this stage, it appears more appropriate to improve the time limits and procedures for holding persons disciplinarily liable and to provide guidance on applying anti-corruption legislation in relation to holding persons liable.

Previous versions of the draft ACS (expected strategic result 1.9.1.1 for problem 1.9.1) provided that a final court decision holding a person criminally, administratively or civilly liable should constitute an unconditional ground for dismissing that person from public service (office) outside the disciplinary procedure.

The MSED of the VRU Secretariat has already made a number of pertinent comments on this provision, including the observation that an attempt to circumvent disciplinary proceedings deprives a person of procedural safeguards ensuring individualisation of guilt and proportionality of the sanction. Court materials may be used in a disciplinary investigation rather than serving as an automatic and unconditional ground for dismissal outside the disciplinary procedure.

It should also be added that this dismissal procedure effectively negates the additional penalty/sanction of deprivation of the right to hold certain positions or engage in certain activities in the context of violations of anti-corruption legislation.

The revised version of the Strategy states that the legislative grounds for disciplinary liability for violations of anti-corruption legislation should be improved, in particular by ‘establishing unconditional grounds for dismissal from service (office) outside the disciplinary procedure for any category of persons authorised to perform the functions of the state or local self-government’.

It should be noted that this wording is overly broad and vague compared with the previous version. In addition, unconditional grounds for dismissal from public service (office) are already defined both by the Labour Code of Ukraine (Articles 36 and 40) and by laws governing the specific features of particular types of public service (for example, Article 87 of the Law ‘On Civil Service’, Article 51 of the Law ‘On the Public Prosecutor’s Office’, etc.).

Therefore, this expected result needs to be clarified to specify that a public servant is subject to dismissal where a court has imposed an additional penalty/sanction in the form of deprivation of the right to hold certain positions or engage in certain activities, as well as where the assets of that person, assets acquired by other persons on their instructions or assets in other cases provided for by Article 290 of the Civil Procedure Code of Ukraine have been recognised as unjustified and recovered to the State.

The wording of expected strategic result 1.9.3.3 concerning the improvement of the procedure for holding persons administratively liable for corruption-related offences has also been changed in this section. Whereas previous versions of the ACS envisaged extending the time limits for imposing an administrative penalty, the current wording is less clear: reviewing the time limits for imposing a penalty for such offences.

In implementing the Anti-Corruption Strategy, this wording may result in these time limits being revised either upwards or downwards, which could, on the contrary, worsen the practice of holding persons administratively liable for corruption-related offences.

The new version of the ACS retains the expected strategic result concerning the Supreme Court’s generalisation of case law in cases of corruption-related administrative offences, about which ALI has already expressed reservations.

The section of the ACS devoted to these issues has undergone significant changes.

First and foremost, the problems identified in the activities of the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) have been moved to this section. This is the right decision, as the HACC is part of the judiciary. The provisions concerning the anti-corruption court themselves have not changed and envisage introducing single-judge consideration of civil and administrative cases, mechanisms to prevent participants in criminal proceedings from abusing procedural rights and the possibility of continuing consideration of a case where one of the three judges on a HACC panel or the Appeal Chamber of the HACC is replaced. The draft ACS also emphasises filling vacant judicial positions and providing permanent premises for judges of the HACC at first instance and in its Appeal Chamber. Implementation of these measures is already under way.

The updated draft ACS somewhat changes the approaches to the participation of international experts in the selection of members of the High Council of Justice (HCJ) and the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine (HQCJ). Whereas the first version (Draft Law No. 15230) expressly provided international experts with a decisive vote, the revised ACS states that selection should be transparent, predictable and improved where necessary, ‘with the temporary involvement of independent experts delegated by international partners, in accordance with paragraph 23.2.1 of the interim benchmarks for Cluster 1 “Fundamentals of the Accession Process”’.

Despite the obvious need to gradually move towards replacing international experts with national experts, at this stage it is still too early for Ukraine to take this step, as ALI has previously emphasised, primarily because judicial self-governance bodies have not yet been reformed. At the same time, the ACS draws attention to the need to fill all vacant positions of HCJ and HQCJ members within timeframes that ensure the uninterrupted functioning of these bodies.

The revised draft ACS changes the approach to addressing problems in the work of the Council of Judges of Ukraine (CJU), namely: ‘The mechanism for forming the Council of Judges of Ukraine is insufficiently regulated and needs to be improved by establishing the term of office of its members, increasing the transparency of candidate selection processes and defining mechanisms for involving the judicial community in discussing and electing members of the Council’. It is proposed to address the problem by increasing the transparency of the processes for selecting candidates for CJU membership (including through advance publication of information about candidates, etc.), determining the term of office of the Council and its members and establishing the grounds and mechanism for early termination of their powers. At the same time, this judicial self-governance body should be elected by secret electronic voting in which all judges participate. The revised version deserves support.

The main problems arising in the work of the National School of Judges of Ukraine (NSJU) are formulated somewhat differently, although the substance of the original expected strategic results has been preserved. In particular, its activities need to be improved to strengthen mechanisms for accountability to the HQCJ, introduce competitive selection for management positions and ensure transparency in the NSJU’s activities. These provisions deserve support. Moreover, similar problems and ways of addressing them are described in the report of the TAIEX mission that audited the NSJU and the Prosecutors’ Training Centre of Ukraine.

The problem of ineffective mechanisms for rotating judges who hold administrative positions in courts (primarily court presidents), which results in judges holding administrative positions for prolonged periods, is formulated more clearly. However, unlike some other provisions of the ACS, no specific proposals are made here for addressing the problem.

Draft Law No. 15230-2 proposed improving the work of the Public Integrity Council, which, in accordance with the recommendations of the Venice Commission (European Commission for Democracy through Law), should be given a statutory role in a system that balances public and state participation in judicial selection, where civil society strengthens transparency but does not substitute for the institutional decision of the judiciary. This provision is absent from the revised draft ACS, although it deserves the support of Members of Parliament during the plenary vote.

The revised draft ACS broadens the approach to ensuring the full functioning of e-justice. In particular, provisions have been added on ensuring electronic court proceedings through the development of the Unified Judicial Information and Communication System (UJICS) and the introduction of analytical tools to prevent, identify and respond to possible abuses (including in the automated distribution of cases, access to information in the Unified State Register of Court Decisions and atypical workloads of courts or individual judges in particular categories of cases).

At the same time, the ongoing development of the UJICS should be supported by adequate financial resources (from the State Budget of Ukraine) and human resources, taking into account the needs of courts and other bodies and institutions of the justice system. This approach deserves support.

The scope of publicly available information about the judicial system has also been expanded. In particular, regular publication of minutes (decisions) of meetings of judges and court statistics broken down by individual court should be ensured.

The revised draft ACS also contains a number of new but debatable proposals. For example, the draft proposes establishing a procedure for publishing practical assignments completed by candidates for judicial office and their criterion-by-criterion assessment. It is not entirely clear what purpose this serves. Candidates who disagree with their scores already challenge them before the Supreme Court. Candidates who are satisfied with their scores proceed to the next stage. What problems the publication of all assignments and all assessments is intended to resolve remains a matter for discussion.

It is also proposed to standardise the rules for interviewing candidates for judicial office. It should be borne in mind that procedures for selecting judges for different instances (and even for some jurisdictions) differ significantly. Therefore, interviews should be standardised within the same procedure.

A significant addition to the draft ACS is the problem of insufficient financial and human resources for the judicial system (problem 2.1.10). To address it, the draft proposes ensuring competitive levels of judicial remuneration and salaries for court staff and staff of other bodies and institutions of the justice system, taking into account workload and the importance and responsibility of the work.

Under the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Judiciary and the Status of Judges’, judicial remuneration is calculated in multiples of the subsistence minimum for able-bodied persons established by the State Budget for the relevant year. Despite the increase in this indicator (UAH 3,328 in 2026), the base used to calculate judicial remuneration has remained unchanged since 2021, because laws on the State Budget establish a separate subsistence minimum for calculating judicial remuneration.

The judicial community itself raised this issue at the XX Regular Congress of Judges of Ukraine in March this year, while the Supreme Court submitted a constitutional petition to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine seeking to have such restrictions declared unconstitutional (registration No. 4/308(26) of 02.06.2026).

A comparison of the provisions of the revised ACS with the previous versions as regards the prosecution service shows continuity in the key ideas: most of the identified problems and expected strategic results have been retained without significant changes. At the same time, the new version clarifies certain provisions in light of European integration commitments and the interim benchmarks for Chapter 23 ‘Judiciary and Fundamental Rights’ of Cluster 1 ‘Fundamentals of the Accession Process’.

Whereas the previous version envisaged resuming competitions for positions of prosecutors at the Office of the Prosecutor General and regional prosecutor’s offices in accordance with the European Commission’s recommendations, the new version of the ACS directly links this result to paragraph 23.2 of the interim benchmarks for Cluster 1 ‘Fundamentals of the Accession Process’. The relevant requirement therefore receives a more specific normative basis within Ukraine’s negotiations with the European Union.

The mechanism and approaches to improving the procedure for appointing and dismissing the Prosecutor General have changed substantially in the revised ACS. The new version acknowledges that the current procedure for appointing and dismissing the Prosecutor General carries risks of informal or political influence and needs to be improved in line with Ukraine’s European commitments. This time, however, the strategic result is formulated in general terms: it envisages ensuring a more transparent and merit-based procedure for selecting the Prosecutor General in accordance with paragraph 23.2 of the interim benchmarks for Cluster 1 ‘Fundamentals of the Accession Process’.

Unlike certain previous legislative initiatives, the ACS does not prescribe a particular model for implementing European integration commitments — an open competition for the position or another mechanism for reducing political influence. This approach gives the legislator greater scope to choose a specific mechanism for appointing the Prosecutor General, provided that the principles set out in the Strategy — transparency, merit-based selection and compliance with Ukraine’s European commitments — are observed. ALI analysed different models for improving the procedure for appointing and dismissing the Prosecutor General, their compliance with European standards, constitutional aspects and possible implementation scenarios in Ukraine in the analytical note ‘Depoliticising the Procedure for Appointing and Dismissing the Prosecutor General: European Models, Constitutional Aspects and Possible Scenarios for Ukraine’.

Particular attention should be paid to the approach to improving the system for evaluating prosecutors’ performance. The revised version, like the previous versions, envisages using evaluation results to make personnel and management decisions, as well as decisions on bonuses.

Unlike Draft Law No. 15230-2, which envisaged the possibility of using evaluation results as grounds for disciplinary action, the revised ACS contains no such possibility. This is consistent with the nature of evaluation as a human resources management and professional development tool rather than a mechanism for imposing liability. ALI’s concerns on this issue have been taken into account.

As regards the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), the expected strategic result concerning granting its Head the power to independently enter information into the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations on the possible commission of a criminal offence by a Member of Parliament of Ukraine and to approve motions considered by an investigating judge has undergone significant changes.

The wording itself is aligned with the interim benchmarks for Cluster 1 ‘Fundamentals of the Accession Process’. This indicates that the previously proposed concept of expanding the procedural autonomy of the Head of SAPO has been retained while being adapted to the European integration framework.

At the same time, criticism concerning the existing political obstacles has been taken into account. As a reminder, in its previous expert analysis ALI noted that ‘if there are political obstacles to MPs supporting the ACS for 2026–2030, this provision may currently be removed from the draft, provided that it is revisited later: either when there is an actual set of cases in which the Prosecutor General has disregarded well-founded materials from the NABU and SAPO, or if a new convocation of the VRU does not feel “burdened” by the political compromise reached earlier’. A less categorical position makes it possible to secure political support for the revised Anti-Corruption Strategy.

As noted previously, the inclusion of the Bar in the ACS for 2026–2030 reflects the relevance of this issue in the context of European integration: development of the Bar is addressed in the Rule of Law Roadmap. Although the Bar is an independent self-governing institution, the legal profession is subject to state regulation. Given the corruption risks existing within the Bar (obtaining a practising certificate, non-transparent budgets, etc.) and systemic problems (the ‘continuity’ of Bar self-governance bodies since 2022, the failure to delegate two members to the HCJ and one to the Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of Prosecutors, etc.), it has become part of state policy on European integration, and the issue now also concerns anti-corruption policy and justice policy.

For the first time, the Bar appears in the draft ACS as a separate, fully fledged subsection — alongside the courts and the prosecution service. This makes it possible to align anti-corruption policy with the Constitution, the logic of justice system reform and Ukraine’s commitments to the EU.

Corruption risks in the justice sector are systemic and are not limited to the courts and the prosecution service. No matter how extensively the courts and prosecution service are reformed, ignoring the Bar in the State’s anti-corruption policy means reproducing corrupt practices across the system as a whole. Even from a formal perspective, under Section VIII of the Constitution of Ukraine, the Bar forms part of the justice system alongside the courts and the prosecution service. Including the Bar in the ACS is therefore a logical and necessary step.

In the section on the Bar, the key problems and expected results have not changed and minor textual amendments do not require analysis. This reflects the consistent approach taken in all three previous drafts of the Anti-Corruption Strategy, which differed somewhat in the level of detail used to describe the problems and in the wording of the expected results, while the substance of the identified corruption risks and approaches to addressing them has remained unchanged.

The list of identified problems in the activities of the National Police of Ukraine (NPU), the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) has not changed.

With regard to the NABU, the revised draft ACS largely contains the expected strategic results set out in Draft Law No. 15230-2, with minor adjustments. These concern strengthening the NABU’s independence and institutional resilience by building a highly professional and integrity-driven team through open and transparent competitions and establishing effective communication between the body and the public, including through the Public Oversight Council.

ALI has previously pointed out that these additions are not substantiated, as neither the media nor reports on the NABU’s activities nor the results of inspections of the body over the past five years mention problems with the openness and transparency of competitions for NABU positions or insufficient effectiveness of its communication with the public.

In June this year, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved the Communication Strategy for Preventing and Combating Corruption for 2026–2030 (Communication Strategy) and the Operational Action Plan for its implementation in 2026–2028. These documents are aimed at improving the effectiveness of communication in the anti-corruption sector as a whole and, in particular, of the NABU as part of that sector. The introductory section of the Communication Strategy states that, according to opinion polls, the public is most aware of the NABU’s activities (compared with SAPO and the HACC).

Adding problems or measures to the Anti-Corruption Strategy without proper substantiation is inconsistent with Part 4 Article 18 of the Law of Ukraine ‘On Prevention of Corruption’, under which a new ACS must be developed on the basis of an analysis of the corruption situation and the results of implementing the previous strategy.

Problems with personnel selection in the NPU and SBI remain, but they have been separated into distinct items. Whereas previously the focus was exclusively on risks in the existing procedures for selecting the heads of these bodies, the revised ACS points to risks of non-transparent appointment and promotion within the NPU more broadly.

To address this problem, it is proposed to make a phased transition to appointments to managerial positions in the NPU, including in central and territorial bodies, exclusively through competitive selection with the involvement of independent experts.

These proposals dilute the proposed solution, because they concern different selection procedures (initial selection, selection for managerial positions and selection of the head of the body). Whereas previous versions proposed introducing a merit-based competition for the position of Head of the NPU and assessing candidates for other managerial positions against criteria of professionalism and integrity, the current proposal focuses on determining in advance the composition of competition (personnel) commissions rather than the key objective of improving competitive selection procedures. Competition commissions differ across bodies and there is no universal model.

Under the current provisions of the Law of Ukraine ‘On the National Police’, the NPU already has competitive selection procedures involving police commissions. At both central and regional level, such commissions must include two representatives of the public delegated by the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights (for the central apparatus) or by a regional-level local self-government body (for a territorial body) — in other words, independent experts representing civil society.

However, competitions are mandatory only for persons entering police service for the first time. The transfer of a police officer to a higher position, including a managerial position, may take place on the basis of attestation or a competition, at the discretion of the manager authorised to make the appointment.

Moreover, the Law contains no direct requirement to assess candidates for service in the NPU or for promotion against the integrity criterion, nor does it define a procedure for selecting the Head of the NPU. This is precisely the problem that needs to be addressed in implementing anti-corruption policy.

However, the wording of the revised draft ACS does not make clear which independent experts are meant (national experts or experts delegated by international organisations) or whether competitive selection of candidates for central and territorial managerial positions should include a stage assessing their integrity and professional ethics. In this respect, therefore, the wording proposed by the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (Draft Law No. 15230) appears clearer and more achievable.

The problem of strengthening the institutional independence of the SBI is set out separately in the revised version, as it was in Draft Law No. 15230-2. In addition to improving the competition for the position of Director of the Bureau, it is also proposed to introduce periodic external audits of the SBI’s activities, with an adverse audit finding serving as grounds for the early dismissal of the body’s leadership.

This addition is appropriate and consistent with Ukraine’s European integration commitments, as well as with the general concept of oversight of specialised bodies investigating criminal offences under a similar model (the NABU and the Economic Security Bureau of Ukraine).

Overall, the revised draft Anti-Corruption Strategy for 2026–2030 incorporates a significant number of comments made by experts. The provisions of the ACS have largely been aligned with the Rule of Law Roadmap and the interim benchmarks for Cluster 1 ‘Fundamentals of the Accession Process’. However, some expected strategic results still require clarification.

It should be recalled that the Anti-Corruption Strategy is not only a requirement of anti-corruption legislation and a prerequisite for stable and progressive anti-corruption policy, but also one of Ukraine’s commitments to international partners, referred to in the conditions for EU accession, the Ukraine Facility Plan and the Extended Fund Facility programme.

Ukraine’s decentralisation reform began in 2014. Newly established communities received new powers and new sources of local budget revenue. Yet stronger financial capacity was not accompanied by a clear system of institutional change defining the distribution of functions and responsibilities. The law never established a clear boundary between the powers of the central authorities and those of communities, districts or regions. The new chain of authority built around temporary military administrations during the full-scale war has made the problem even more acute.

A law delimiting powers among levels of public governance was supposed to resolve the problem and clarify who is responsible for what. It has still not been adopted, although Ukraine was required to do so by the end of March 2026 under the Ukraine Facility.

Moreover, how clearly the state defines the responsibilities of different levels of government will determine not only the further development of decentralisation, but also whether Ukraine meets some of its EU integration commitments. The debate around draft law No. 14412 ‘On the Principles of Delimitation and Distribution of Powers among Levels of Public Governance’ is therefore no longer solely a domestic discussion about the architecture of government. With the opening of the first negotiating cluster, ‘Fundamentals’, the issue has become part of a broader task: aligning Ukrainian legislation with European standards and fulfilling the commitments that will accompany the accession negotiations.

The European system of local self-government is based on a simple principle: decisions should be taken as close to the individual as possible. In EU law, this is known as subsidiarity. The European Charter of Local Self-Government, for example, gives communities the discretion, within the law, to determine how they exercise their powers. Ukraine’s system of local self-government, despite its declared commitment to European principles, remains heavily shaped by centralised administrative practices and a blurred division of powers, which constrain communities’ capacity.

Draft law No. 14412 is intended to change this in part. It creates a framework for further reform by classifying powers and introducing rules for their distribution among the state, regions, districts and communities. A separate law, together with amendments to more than 150 existing laws and other legal acts, is expected to define the powers conclusively.

Draft law No. 14412 should bring the system closer to a model in which communities perform their functions without state interference while receiving funding both from the State Budget and from revenues generated through the exercise of their own powers. This includes, for example, building schools, hospitals and sports facilities. The change should improve the quality of public services and reduce conflicts between local self-government bodies and local executive authorities.

At first sight, draft law No. 14412 should resolve a problem left unaddressed for years by determining who is responsible for what within the system of public governance. In its current form, however, the draft law creates risks. Some provisions may expand the central authorities’ ability to influence how local self-government bodies exercise their powers and may jeopardise communities’ autonomy. This contradicts the logic of decentralisation, which involves transferring not only resources and responsibilities, but also the freedom and capacity to make decisions locally.

For example, draft law No. 14412 contains a proposal that is inconsistent with the Constitution: some powers of local self-government bodies would be defined by secondary legislation rather than by laws. This would allow the Government or other executive authorities to change the rules without going through the full parliamentary procedure. A community might, for example, introduce an innovation that falls within its formal powers. The Cabinet could then change the implementation procedure through secondary legislation, forcing the community to revise or postpone the decision. For residents, the result is straightforward: what was promised was not delivered or did not become operational on time.

The draft law also proposes allowing legislation to prescribe exactly how local self-government bodies must perform the powers and functions assigned to them. This would not only conflict with the European Charter of Local Self-Government, which grants communities autonomy in such matters, but would undermine the very essence of self-government. If a community is responsible for maintaining local roads, for example, it rather than the law should decide whether to establish a municipal enterprise, hire contractors or combine different approaches.

In addition, the draft law introduces ‘optional powers’ that executive authorities may ‘pass down’ to the executive bodies of local councils ‘on a contractual basis’. It is unclear who would be responsible for these tasks or how they would be financed. This is inconsistent with both the Constitution and Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 1748 and is generally alien to European law.

The draft law also provides for limited judicial review, meaning that communities would have little practical ability to protect themselves against interference by other public authorities. Some matters they currently decide — including permits, certificates and approvals, setting rates for local taxes and fees such as property tax, tourist tax and parking fees and granting exemptions — could therefore remain within their competence only formally, without any effective means of exercising those powers or defending them in court.

Adopting draft law No. 14412 in its current form could disrupt the balance among branches of government, create conflict between Parliament and the Government over the model of public governance, slow EU integration and eventually lead to the law being declared unconstitutional.

As Ukraine seeks to answer the question of who is responsible for what, the draft law intended to provide that answer risks leaving communities dependent on the centre once again. The new rules for distributing powers should not reproduce a post-communist centralised model but should reflect European practices. They should support a transition to a system in which communities are not passive implementers of central government decisions, but full participants in public governance within the limits established by law.

Following the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian war in 2014 and the full-scale invasion in 2022, the return of combatants to civilian life and their full reintegration has become one of the key challenges of state policy. Ukraine already has over 2 million veterans, and once the active phase of the war ends their number will rise significantly. At the same time, the current system of support for veterans remains fragmented and is largely based on approaches formed back in the early 1990s.

The principal legislative act in the field of support for veterans and their families is the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Status of War Veterans and Guarantees of Their Social Protection’, adopted in 1993. This Law does not establish a coherent system of state veterans policy; it regulates matters of status and sets out more than 20 benefits, only a few of which work in practice. The regulation of other aspects of veterans support is scattered across dozens of laws and items of subordinate legislation. This leads to the duplication of provisions, gaps in legal regulation and difficulties in accessing services and support.

A further problem is the absence of a legally regulated mechanism for the transition from military service to civilian life. As a result, veterans often face difficulties in accessing medical assistance, mental and psychological support, professional retraining, employment, the launch of their own business, the receipt of social services and participation in community life.

The situation is compounded by insufficient coordination among state authorities, local self-government bodies, healthcare institutions, employment services and other actors that provide services to veterans.

The existing system does not take into account the importance of communities as the principal actor in delivering veterans’ reintegration measures. There is also uneven access to services depending on the community of residence, a shortage of trained specialists — particularly in psychological support, rehabilitation and social care — and the insufficient adaptation of many state services to the specific needs of veterans.

The need to create a comprehensive state veterans policy and a system for the transition from military service to civilian life is reflected in the Veterans Policy Strategy until 2030.

The need to develop a comprehensive state veterans policy corresponds to Ukraine’s commitments in the spheres of social policy, employment and inclusion within the process of accession to the European Union.

The European Commission’s Ukraine 2025 Report points to the need to promote the integration of veterans into the labour market and to safeguard the rights of persons with disabilities, whose number is growing as a result of the war.

The need to develop a comprehensive system of support for veterans and their reintegration is also noted in the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS) briefing ‘Ukraine’s Veterans Policy’ (2026), which regards veterans as one of the key resources for the country’s post-war recovery.

In June 2026, the mandate of the EU Advisory Mission for Civilian Security Sector Reform Ukraine (EUAM Ukraine) was expanded, addingCouncil of the European Union. ‘EUAM Ukraine: Council broadens the Mission’s mandate to counter hybrid threats and support veteran reintegration’. Press release, 11 May 2026. EU Advisory Mission Ukraine (EUAM Ukraine). ‘EUAM Ukraine Starts Operating under Expanded Mandate’. News release, 15 May 2026. new priorities to its work that include support for the rehabilitation and reintegration of veterans.

At the same time, the Ukraine Facility Plan expressly provides for a reform of the transition from military service to civilian life, encompassing rehabilitation, psychological support, professional retraining, employment and support for veteran entrepreneurship, with a completion deadline in the third quarter of 2026.

• a fragmented and outdated model of veterans support oriented towards a system of benefits and payments;
• limited access to medical and rehabilitation care and to mental health support and psychosocial support;
• reduced employment and economic self-sufficiency owing to the underdevelopment of employment and entrepreneurship-support mechanisms;
• heightened risks of social exclusion, deterioration of psycho-emotional wellbeing and the loss of human capital;
• ineffective use of veterans’ potential for economic recovery, community development and strengthening societal resilience;
• the persistence of fragmented regulation and insufficient coordination among authorities, local self-government and service providers;
• a mismatch with contemporary international approaches to veterans policy and the reintegration of veterans.

In March 2025, Law of Ukraine No. 4285-IX was adopted, setting out priorities for creating a system of support for war veterans, members of their families and the families of fallen Defenders of Ukraine, in particular through the streamlining of veterans policy.

These priorities are to be implemented in a corresponding legislative act. Several draft acts have been developed so far: the draft Law of Ukraine ‘On the Fundamental Principles of State Veterans Policy regarding Veterans Who Took Part in Repelling the Armed Aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine’ (registration No. 13696, dated 25 August 2025). The draft was prepared to implement step 7.4 of the Ukraine Facility Plan.

In parallel, the Government has drafted the Code of Ukraine on the Protection of Statehood, Independence and the Status of Defenders of the State (the Veterans’ Code) (registration No. 14265, dated 28 November 2025), which aims to codify legislative acts into a single legal instrument.

The Verkhovna Rada Committee on Social Policy and Protection of Veterans’ Rights has prepared its own (alternative) version of the draft Code on the Protection of Statehood, Independence and the Status of Defenders of the State (registration No. 14265-1, dated 17 December 2025).

All of the above draft legislative acts enshrine veterans’ rights in the areas of:

• rehabilitation and medical care, including psychological assistance;
• training, retraining and professional development programmes;
• the conditions necessary for the employment of veterans as a distinct category;
• measures to support veteran businesses.

Persistence of a Fragmented Veterans Policy System

Legislation in the veterans sphere remains scattered across a large number of laws and items of subordinate legislation. In the absence of a comprehensive legislative act, individual aspects of support for veterans and their families continue to be governed by different instruments.

This creates risks of:

• duplication of the functions and powers of public authorities;
• inconsistency among state veterans-support programmes;
• difficulty for veterans in accessing services and support programmes;
• the uneven application of state policy at community level.

Absence of a Coherent System for Transition from Military Service to Civilian Life

Despite the development of individual veterans-support programmes, Ukraine still lacks a legally defined, coherent system for the transition from military service to civilian life that would ensure continuous support for a service member both before and after their discharge.

This increases the risk that:

• veterans will not receive timely information about available services and support;
• veterans’ needs in the spheres of rehabilitation, mental health, education and employment will go unidentified;
• state and local support programmes will operate in isolation from one another;
• the reintegration of veterans will depend largely on their place of residence and the capacity of the particular community.

Loss of Human Capital and of Potential for the Country’s Recovery

Veterans are one of the key groups on which Ukraine’s post-war recovery will largely depend. The absence of an effective system of support and reintegration may limit veterans’ opportunities for employment, education, entrepreneurial activity and participation in community life.

This creates risks of:

• a decline in veterans’ economic activity;
• increased social isolation;
• growing demand for social support in the future and an excessive burden on the social assistance system;
• the underuse of veterans’ potential for community development and the country’s recovery.

Risk of Failing to Meet Commitments under the Ukraine Facility

The entry into force of a legislative act on state veterans policy is defined as one of the steps of the Ukraine Facility Plan. The purpose of this step is to build a comprehensive system of support for veterans, particularly in the spheres of rehabilitation, medical and psychological assistance, professional adaptation, employment and veteran entrepreneurship.

A delay in adopting or implementing the relevant legislation may:

• complicate the fulfilment of the indicators of the Ukraine Facility Plan;
• negatively affect the assessment of reform progress by European partners.

Short-Term (Urgent Legislative Actions)

• Adopt a legislative act on state veterans policy.

A single legislative act should enshrine the foundations of state veterans policy and create the legal basis for forming a system for the transition from military service to civilian life.

In doing so, it is advisable to:

• define the principles and objectives of state veterans policy;
• establish a system for the transition from military service to civilian life;
• define the powers of state authorities, local self-government bodies and other persons involved in ensuring the transition;
• provide for mechanisms to identify the individual needs of veterans and members of their families and to introduce case management approaches;
• ensure inter-agency coordination in the field of veterans support.

Medium-Term

• Establish a fully fledged system for the transition from military service to civilian life.

The introduction of such a system should go beyond individual support programmes and provide for the continuous support of a service member from the moment preparation for discharge begins until the reintegration process is complete, engaging numerous stakeholders and ensuring coordination among them.

In particular:

1. introduce a mechanism for assessing a service member’s needs prior to discharge;
2. define the procedure for inter-agency cooperation between the security and defence sector and civilian authorities;
3. ensure continuity of access to medical, rehabilitation, social, educational and other services;
4. create mechanisms for informing veterans about available support programmes;
5. establish a system of coordination among state authorities, local self-government bodies and other persons that provide support to veterans and their families.

• Strengthen the role of territorial communities in implementing veterans policy.

The reintegration of veterans takes place primarily at community level, so state policy should provide appropriate tools to support the local level.

To this end, it is advisable to:

1. define minimum standards for supporting veterans in communities;
2. ensure the development of a system of veteran-support specialists;
3. create mechanisms for coordination among communities, veteran spaces and service providers;
4. help strengthen communities’ capacity to provide services to veterans and members of their families.

• Ensure the transition from a benefits model to a model of restoring human capital.

The further development of veterans policy should be aimed not only at social protection but also at creating conditions for veterans’ active participation in the life of the state and communities.

In particular, it is necessary to:

• expand opportunities for vocational education and requalification;
• improve veteran employment-support programmes;
• develop tools to support veteran entrepreneurship;
• ensure the necessary level of health recovery;
• integrate mental health issues into all stages of reintegration;
• introduce mechanisms for assessing the effectiveness of state veterans policy on the basis of veterans’ outcomes and needs.

This infobrief was compiled with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the International Renaissance Foundation.

Involving international (foreign) experts in selection commissions within judicial authorities and the Constitutional Court of Ukraine (CCU) is an important element of advancing Ukraine’s European integration interests. It helps to bring national legislation closer to European standards and increases the confidence of European institutions and partners in the reforms. Such involvement stems from Ukraine’s international commitments, as well as from the Rule of Law Roadmap.

The Ukraine Facility Plan provides that ‘further improvement of the selection of new Supreme Court (SC) judges is important, through enhancing the integrity vetting procedure and the meaningful involvement of independent experts’. It also states that the ‘High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) is steadily improving its overall operational effectiveness; however, additional judges are needed, selected transparently and on the basis of integrity vetting, with the involvement of the Public Council of International Experts (PCIE)’.

The Rule of Law Roadmap sets out a commitment to fill all 25 vacant positions at the HACC, specifically with the involvement of the PCIE, by the end of the first quarter of 2026.

The European Commission has noted the need to continue involving international experts in the selection of new members of the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine (HQCJ). The Commission has also recommended improving the selection of SC judges and the verification of the integrity declarations of SC judges and judges of other higher courts, with the temporary but meaningful involvement of independent experts nominated by international partners.

The problem is that, in fulfilling these international commitments, selection commissions involving international (foreign) experts apply different approaches to adopting and publishing their decisions. 

This concerns the selection of candidates for the positions of members of:

• the HQCJ;
• the High Council of Justice (HCJ);
• the head of the Service of Disciplinary Inspectors (SDI), their deputy, and disciplinary inspectors;
• judges of the CCU;
• judges of the HACC;
• judges of the Specialised District Administrative Court (SDAC);
• judges of the Specialised Administrative Court of Appeal (SACA).

The differing approaches relate both to the structure and reasoning of selection commissions’ decisions and to the issuing of so-called ‘negative conclusions’ (that is, decisions concerning candidates who have ceased to take part in the competition). For example, the Selection Commission for the positions of HQCJ members (the HQCJ Selection Commission) issues no such conclusions at all; instead, it produces only a final list of candidates recommended for the post of HQCJ member. By contrast, the Ethics Council (which assists in establishing whether a candidate for the post of HCJ member meets the criteria of professional ethics and integrity) actively uses ‘negative conclusions’.

Another problem is the adoption of unreasoned decisions. Proper reasoning of decisions following the assessment of candidates against the established criteria should give a clear understanding of what guided the selection commissions when assessing those candidates: what was taken into account and what was not, and the grounds for a particular decision. Proper reasoning would not only resolve many questions for candidates (in particular those who did not pass the competition), but would also help to increase confidence in selection commissions’ decisions. While some selection commissions’ decisions are fairly well structured and properly reasoned (for example, those of the HQCJ and the PCIE), others contain only general wording and boilerplate phrasing and lack proper justification. Such problems are present, for instance, in the Ethics Council’s decisions on candidates’ compliance with the criteriaAt the same time, the Ethics Council’s decisions finding candidates non-compliant with the criteria of professional ethics and integrity are, by contrast, well reasoned. of professional ethics and integrity.

The application of inconsistent practice in formulating decisions may create risks for understanding selection commissions’ approaches to assessing candidates, and does nothing to promote the transparency of their work.

Different selection commissions use different decision-making models. The votes of international (foreign) experts are always decisive; however, the specific models differ. For instance, a joint decision of the HQCJ and the PCIE in selecting HACC judges requires a majority of the total number of participants in the joint sitting, but no fewer than three votes of PCIE members. For commissions such as the Ethics Council or the SDI Selection Commission, four votes are required, two of which belong to international (foreign) experts. This makes the system of selection commissions confusing and difficult to understand, reducing its transparency and coherence.

A separate issue requiring attention is the right to a casting vote, where approaches likewise differ. For example, international experts hold the right to a casting vote (the Ethics Council, the HQCJ Selection Commission, the Selection Commission for the positions of the head of the SDI, their deputy, and disciplinary inspectors (the SDI Selection Commission), the Advisory Group of Experts (AGE), and the Expert Council); the PCIE has the right to veto any candidate for the post of HACC judge on the grounds of non-compliance with the established criteria.

Numerous cases have also been recorded in which the same person may apply for different competitions for posts, both within a single body and across different bodies under different quotas allocated by different appointing/electing entities. As a result, the absence of a single database of candidates taking part in competitive procedures gives rise to divergent practice in deciding whether one and the same candidate complies with the established criteria.

Certain differences are also observed in the publication of selection commissions’ decisions. For example, the Ethics Council adopts and publishes a reasoned conclusion on whether each candidate for the post of HCJ member meets the criteria of professional ethics and integrity; the SDI Selection Commission publishes reasoned decisions concerning candidates whose participation was terminated owing to a reasonable doubt as to their compliance with the integrity criterion or the ethical standards established for a judge, but only at the candidate’s written request; for candidates assessed as ‘non-compliant’ against the criteria of high moral qualities or a recognised level of competence in the field of law, the AGE publishes only the operative part of the decision, without setting out the reasons underlying it. The full, reasoned text of the decision is published by the AGE at the written request of such a candidate.

The decisions of some selection commissions (all except the AGE) cannot be challenged in court because they are not regarded as ‘final’. The SC has developed a systematic position on selection commissions, according to which they do not adopt final decisions but merely assist the appointing/electing entity by carrying out a discrete stage of the competitive procedure. Judicial review is instead possible only in respect of the final decision of the appointing/electing entity.

The question of defining the ‘finality of decisions’ is particularly contentious for those candidates who, as a result of selection commissions’ decisions finding them non-compliant with the established criteria, effectively cease to take part in the competition. For them, such decisions are in essence final (leaving the appointing/electing entity no choice), and the impossibility of challenging them deprives the person of the right to judicial protection. Legislation provides only for the possibility of challenging AGE decisions — specifying which of its decisions may be challenged in court and on which exceptional grounds — whereas no such legislative provision exists for the decisions of other selection commissions.

A further obstacle to the judicial challenge of selection commissions’ decisions in administrative courts is their lack of public-authority powers. The SC’s case law has established an approach according to which selection commissions are not entities vested with public-authority powers in disputed legal relations. Accordingly, in some cases the SC’s case law indicates that disputes against selection commissions are not subject to consideration under the rules of administrative justice (the Ethics Council, the HQCJ Selection Commission, the SDI Selection Commission). Selection commissions are neither bodies of authority nor entities vested with public-authority powers; they do not have the status of legal entities. Representing such commissions, even in administrative proceedings, is hampered by the absence of rules for designating a representative to sign procedural documents on behalf of selection commissions (their heads do not hold such powers) and to take part in court hearings.

The exception is the AGE, which the Administrative Cassation Court within the Supreme Court recognisesRuling of the Administrative Cassation Court within the Supreme Court of 20 February 2025 (case No. 990/407/24, proceedings No. П/990/407/24). as a body ‘vested by the state with authoritative and managerial functions in the legal relations arising in the process of forming the judicial corps of the CCU’.

Where such practice is absent:

• the risk of breeding distrust in the functioning of selection commissions and in the competitive procedure as a whole increases;
• risks arise in the understanding — by candidates, outside observers, and the public — of these selection commissions’ approaches to assessing candidates.

At present, there are no draft laws addressing the problem described.

1. Applying different approaches to voting and decision-making by selection commissions — in particular regarding the structure and reasoning of decisions and the approach to determining voting results and so-called negative conclusions — breeds distrust in the functioning of these commissions and in the competitive procedure as a whole.
2. The absence of public voting results and insufficient reasoning and justification of such decisions breeds distrust in the functioning of these commissions and in the competitive procedure as a whole.
3. The absence of a single database of candidates taking part in competitive procedures gives rise to divergent practice in deciding whether one and the same candidate complies with the established criteria.
4. The absence of unified approaches to determining the finality of decisions for those candidates who, as a result of selection commissions’ decisions finding them non-compliant with the established criteria, effectively cease to take part in the competition. For such candidates these decisions are in fact final — and the impossibility of challenging them, at the level of both regulatory acts and SC case law, deprives them of the right to judicial protection.

The adoption and publication of decisions by selection commissions involving international (foreign) experts in judicial authorities and the CCU require further regulation.

1. Avoid a formalistic approach to justifying decisions following the assessment of candidates’ compliance with the established criteria.
2. Develop a uniform approach to the structure, justification, and adoption of decisions following the assessment of candidates’ compliance with the established criteria within a single commission.
3. Develop and approve a template/model decision for the assessment of candidates’ compliance with the established criteria, together with accompanying guidance enshrining the requirement that such decisions be properly reasoned.
4. Provide that negative decisions of selection commissions be published in anonymised form, and positive decisions be published with the personal data that were public during the candidate’s public interview. If a person who received a positive decision was not appointed to the post, they may apply to the selection commission to have their data anonymised.
5. Develop and introduce a single database of candidate profiles, with a uniform CV format, for those taking part in competitions for posts in judicial authorities and the CCU. Grant access to these profiles to members of the relevant selection commissions and of the relevant bodies to which candidates are appointed/elected.
6. In future, review the approach to granting international (foreign) experts a casting vote.
7. Hold a broad discussion on the question of defining the final nature of decisions adopted by selection commissions.
8. Enshrine in legislation clear grounds for the judicial challenge of selection commissions’ decisions solely on the basis of procedural non-compliance, in particular for candidates for whom such commissions’ decisions on non-compliance with the established criteria effectively mean the termination of their participation in the competition and are therefore final. The legislation should provide for the period over which a selection commission assesses a candidate’s compliance with the integrity criterion.
9. Enshrine in legislation rules governing which selection commissions’ decisions may be challenged and on what grounds, which may not be challenged, and the rules for representing selection commissions in court.
10. Continue consolidating the SC’s case law and developing standard approaches to resolving disputed situations on the issues identified.

This infobrief was compiled with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the International Renaissance Foundation.

European integration assessmentThis refers to (1) the assessment of a draft law’s compliance with Ukraine’s international commitments in the field of European integration and (2) the verification of a draft law’s compliance with EU law (the EU acquis). is designed to verify whether a draft law complies with European Union law (the EU acquis). Such an assessment makes it possible to evaluate how far the proposed regulation aligns with the relevant act of EU law and to identify, in good time, provisions that may conflict with EU law and slow down the adaptation of Ukrainian legislation.

The obligation to carry out European integration assessment of draft laws is set out in several legal acts of differing legal force, each governing different stages of the legislative process. This approach does not foster a single, unified mechanism for conducting European integration assessment, since its individual elements are regulated in different ways.

Parliamentary assessment is carried out by the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Ukraine’s Integration into the European Union (hereinafter, the Committee on European Integration). Current legislation does not oblige other committees to respond to the observations and proposals set out in the Committee’s opinions. The absence of any statutory definition of a ‘European integration draft law’, or of the criteria for one, limits the scope for the relevant committee to carry out European integration assessment.

The requirement to assess draft laws for compliance with international commitments on European integration and with EU law is established by several legal acts.

Law of Ukraine No. 1629-IV ‘On the State Programme for Adaptation of Ukrainian Legislation to the Legislation of the European Union’, adopted in 2004, remains in force. Law No. 1629-IV provides for the mandatory assessment of all draft laws by the parliamentary committee on European integration. The committee is required to determine whether a draft law falls within an area, the legal relations of which are governed by EU law. Draft laws falling within such areas are referred to the authorised central executive authority for the preparation of an expert opinion on their compliance with the EU acquis.

This Law, however, has not been amended following the enshrinement of the European integration course in the Constitution of Ukraine or the granting to Ukraine of EU candidate status. In practice, although the Law remains formally in force, it is not applied.

Instead, the assessment of European integration laws is governed by several other acts. A draft law initiated by the Government undergoes assessment before it is even registered in Parliament. The Rules of Procedure of the Cabinet of Ministers require every draft law to undergo a mandatory assessment of its compliance with Ukraine’s European integration commitments and with EU law.

Assessment of European integration laws is provided throughout a draft law’s passage through the Verkhovna Rada: from registration to consideration in the second and subsequent readings.

The Rules of Procedure of the Verkhovna Rada provide that, after registration, every draft law must be referred to the Committee on European Integration, which assesses the draft law’s compliance with Ukraine’s commitments in the field of European integration and issues an expert opinion. The Committee is required to deliver this opinion within 21 days. In practice, given the volume of draft laws registered in Parliament, meeting this requirement of the Rules of Procedure is unrealistic. Since the start of the ninth convocation, more than 9,000 draft laws have been registeredAs at 01.06.2026, 9,145 draft laws had been registered in the Verkhovna Rada. in the Verkhovna Rada.

In July 2022, Parliament adopted Resolution No. 2483-IX ‘On Certain Measures to Fulfil Ukraine’s Commitments in the Field of European Integration’, which provided for additional assessment of European integration draft laws. When preparing such draft laws for the second and subsequent readings, parliamentary committees are required to refer them to the Committee on European Integration and to the Government for additional assessment.

As a result, the mechanism for European integration assessment of draft laws is established by acts of differing legal force, which undermines the development of a consistent practice in assessing European integration draft laws. Moreover, neither the Rules of Procedure of the Verkhovna Rada nor Resolution No. 2483-IX places main committees any obligation to respond to the observations expressed in the expert opinions of the Committee on European Integration.

At the same time, legislation contains no definition of what constitutes a European integration draft law, which somewhat diminishes the role of such assessment. A draft law may be designated as a European integration draft law at different stages of its passage through the Verkhovna Rada (at registration or after its adoption in the first reading), creating a risk that the relevant committee or the Government may become involved and deliver its opinionFor example, the Committee revised its opinion on Draft Law No. 13071 — determining that the draft law was aimed at implementing a measure under the Roadmap on the Functioning of Democratic Institutions — only after the draft law had been adopted in the first reading and after the comparative table for the second reading had been submitted. The Committee on European Integration had not provided an opinion before the first reading. Draft law card, registration No. 13071 of 11.03.2025. only at a late stage. Where a draft law is revised after it has been designated as a European integration draft law, bringing it into line with EU law may require additional time.

For a long time, draft laws were designated as ‘European integration’ by the Committee on European Integration, acting at the request of the Government or the main committee, or on its own initiative. In June 2026, Members of Parliament adopted Resolution No. 4912-IX ‘On Parliamentary Support for the Negotiation Process on Ukraine’s Accession to Membership of the European Union’, which provides that the special ‘European integration’ marker is assigned by the Secretariat of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine to draft laws submitted by the Government to implement the National Programme for the Adaptation of Ukrainian Legislation to the Law of the European Union. Other draft laws may acquire ‘European integration’ status on the basis of an opinion of the Committee on European Integration.

Whether or not a draft law has been designated as a European integration draft law determines the extent of the Committee on European Integration’s involvement. If a draft law prepared for the second reading is, in substance, contrary to EU law but has not been designated as a European integration draft law, the Committee on European Integration has no right to deliver its opinion.

To strengthen the role of European integration assessment in the consideration and adoption of draft laws in the Verkhovna Rada, the following steps are needed:

• Unify the European integration assessment process across all stages of a draft law’s consideration in Parliament, preferably by introducing a dedicated procedure for the adoption of European integration draft laws.
• Define the concept of, and the requirements for, a ‘European integration draft law’. This would help to resolve the uncertainty surrounding which draft laws are subject to European integration assessment.
• Expand the powers of the Committee on European Integration to conduct assessment at all stages of the legislative process. Assessing every draft law prepared for the second and subsequent readings would be impractical given the Committee’s heavy workload. Instead, the Committee could be granted the right to conduct European integration assessment of draft laws (that have not been designated as European integration draft laws) on its own initiative or at the request of the main committee. Other committees should develop a mechanism for responding to the opinions of the Committee on European Integration — for example, by considering such opinions at committee meetings.

This infobrief was compiled with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the International Renaissance Foundation.

Who should appoint and dismiss the Prosecutor General, and how? Today, that decision rests almost entirely with those in power: the President appoints the head of the prosecution service with the consent of the Verkhovna Rada, while removal can be secured through a parliamentary vote of no confidence — a majority of MPs’ votes.

The consequence is chronic institutional instability: in all the years of Ukraine’s independence, no Prosecutor General has served a full term of office, and the average tenure falls short of even two years.

The dismissal procedure was criticised as far back as 2014 by the Venice Commission, yet the 2016 constitutional amendments on justice left the office of the Prosecutor General untouched. Ukraine has therefore already committed to depoliticising the procedure as part of its accession to the European Union. The agenda now features a draft law that would introduce an open competition for the post of Prosecutor General with the involvement of international experts — a proposal that has stirred public debate.

In a new policy paper, the experts of the Agency for Legislative Initiatives examine the substance of Ukraine’s European integration commitments, the relevant European standards and the models adopted by EU member states; weigh the arguments for and against an open competition for the post of Prosecutor General through the lens of constitutionality; and set out concrete scenarios — from the most far-reaching to the most modest — for both appointment and dismissal.

The Agency for Legislative Initiatives sets out its own vision: which option is best in the long term, and what can realistically be done right now — under martial law, when amendments to the Constitution are not possible.

Read the policy paper to understand how the office of the Prosecutor General can be depoliticised — and why this is one of the key preconditions for the rule of law in Ukraine.

Following the amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine, the powers of the Verkhovna Rada were extended, defining the principles for implementing the state’s course towards acquiring full membership of Ukraine in the European Union and NATO. At the same time, no amendments have been made to the sectoral lawsThe Rules of Procedure of the Verkhovna Rada, the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Committees of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine’, the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Status of the People’s Deputy of Ukraine’, and the Law of Ukraine ‘On Temporary Investigative Commissions and Temporary Special Commissions of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine’. that would clarify the powers of the Verkhovna Rada and its bodies in the sphere of European integration.

The role and powers of the Verkhovna Rada and its bodies in the European integration process are regulated only in a fragmentary manner, which prevents the formation of a coherent system of institutional arrangements for EU accession.

As the sole body of legislative power, Parliament adopts laws, including European integration laws. However, the pace at which such laws are adopted is slow: over the course of 2026, the Verkhovna Rada adopted only eightAs of 17.06.2026. European integration laws. The Rules of Procedure of the Verkhovna Rada contain no separate, expedited procedure for adopting European integration laws.

Within its oversight function, the Verkhovna Rada applies certain mechanisms to scrutinise the activities of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine in the sphere of European integration: holding a ‘Government Question Time’For example, on 01.05.2026 the Verkhovna Rada held a ‘Government Question Time’, the topic of which was the current state of the negotiation process on Ukraine’s accession to the European Union, the opening of negotiation clusters, the fulfilment of Ukraine’s international commitments in the sphere of European integration, and the implementation of the list of priority draft laws aimed at adapting Ukrainian legislation to European Union law. Verbatim record of the plenary sitting of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine of 01.05.2026. On 29.05.2026 the Verkhovna Rada held a ‘Government Question Time’, the topic of which was the implementation of state policy in the sphere of Ukraine’s foreign-policy activity under martial law. Verbatim record of the plenary sitting of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine of 29.05.2026. or hearing representatives of the GovernmentOn 29 April 2026, a meeting of the Committee on Agrarian and Land Policy was held. Committee on Agrarian and Land Policy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, 2026. At the meeting on 06.05.2026, the Committee on Finance, Taxation and Customs Policy heard information at its meeting on the principal commitments within the negotiation process on Ukraine’s accession to the EU relating to finance, taxation and customs policy. Materials of the Committee meeting of 6 May 2026. Committee on Finance, Taxation and Customs Policy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, 2026. in committees.

At the same time, there is no coherent legislative mechanism governing how interaction should take place between the Government that currently acts as the principal driving force in the sphere of European integration and Parliament. Certain institutional mechanisms for coordination and procedures for adapting legislation are set out in the Law of Ukraine ‘On the State Programme for Adaptation of Ukrainian Legislation to the Legislation of the European Union’, adopted in 2004. The Law defined the role of the Verkhovna Rada and the Cabinet of Ministers, of the authorised body in the sphere of adaptation, and of the Coordination Council for the implementation of the State Programme. For example, under this Law, the Coordination Council is to prepare an action plan for implementing the State Programme, the relevant parliamentary committee is to approve it, and the Cabinet of Ministers is to endorse it. However, this Law has not undergone any amendments — neither after the European integration course was enshrined in the Constitution, nor after the Association Agreement entered into force, nor after the start of Ukraine’s EU accession process.

In June 2026, Members of Parliament adopted Resolution No. 4912-IX on parliamentary support for the negotiation process. By this Resolution, the Verkhovna Rada took note of the National Programme for the Adaptation of Ukrainian Legislation to European Union Law (EU acquis)Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine ‘On Approval of the National Programme for the Adaptation of Ukrainian Legislation to European Union Law (EU acquis)’ of 01.04.2026 No. 438. It should be noted that measure 2 of strategic outcome 5 of the section ‘Policy Development and Coordination’ of the Public Administration Reform Roadmap provides that the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine is to adopt a draft law approving the National Adaptation Programme., approved by the Government. The Government has an obligation to agree any changes to the National Programme for the Adaptation of Ukrainian Legislation to EU Law with the Chair of the Verkhovna RadaOr, in the Chair’s absence, with the First Deputy Chair or a Deputy Chair of the Verkhovna Rada..

The Resolution relates rather to the oversight powers of the Verkhovna Rada and provides that the Government must report on progress in the sphere of European integration: (1) inform the Verkhovna Rada, the main committee and the Committee on European integration of the results of consultations with the European Union concerning the content of draft laws being prepared by the Government and of draft laws already registered in Parliament; (2) submit a quarterly report on the state of implementation of the National Programme for the Adaptation of Ukrainian Legislation to European Union Law (EU acquis); (3) submit a quarterly report on the current state of negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the EU; and (4) promptly inform the Verkhovna Rada of decisions taken in respect of Ukraine by EU bodies and of the individual positions of member states, and so on. At the same time, this approach to providing information can hardly be described as inclusive or transparent: Resolution No. 4912-IX does not provide for the consideration of the reports submitted by the Government (whether by the relevant committee or at a plenary sitting of Parliament).

Resolution No. 4912-IX also placesThe National Adaptation Programme also comprises the Rule of Law Roadmap, the Public Administration Reform Roadmap, the Roadmap on the Functioning of Democratic Institutions, and the Action Plan for the Protection of the Rights of Persons Belonging to National Minorities (Communities) of Ukraine. the Chair of the Verkhovna Rada under an obligation to ensure coordination of the Verkhovna Rada and its Secretariat with regard to (1) implementing the measures of the Roadmap on the Functioning of Democratic Institutions (in respect of Section III, ‘The Functioning of Parliaments in a Democratic System’); and (2) the procedure for working with the National Adaptation Programme.

Within the Verkhovna Rada of the ninth convocation, the Committee on Ukraine’s Integration into the European Union is in operation. It is this Committee that carries out the parliamentary assessment of draft laws for compliance with Ukraine’s international legal obligations in the sphere of European integration and with the EU acquis. The Rules of Procedure of the Verkhovna Rada provide that this Committee prepares an opinion on every draft law registered in Parliament.

In addition, pursuant to Resolution No. 2483-IX, the Committee on European Integration also assesses European integration draft laws ahead of the second and subsequent readings, which increases the workload on the Committee. The Chair of the Committee has repeatedly emphasised the need to strengthen the Committee’s staffing capacity. The Committee’s powers also include granting a draft law ‘European integration’ status, at the request of the Government or the main committee, or on its own initiative.

Within its oversight powers, the Committee holds monitoring meetings. For example, in April 2026, the Committee held a meeting, where the National Programme for the Adaptation of Ukrainian Legislation to EU Law was presented.

At the same time, the Committee has not been designatedThis is due to the distribution of areas of competence among the committees of the Verkhovna Rada. For example, a draft law concerning the protection of natural resources is considered by the Committee on Environmental Policy and Nature Management; one concerning the activities of political parties, by the Committee on Legal Policy; one concerning customs policy, by the Committee on Finance, Taxation and Customs Policy, and so on — even though such draft laws may be European integration ones. as the main committee for the preparation of any European integration draft law, which means that the weight of its assessment in the legislative process depends largely on the position of the main committee and its willingness to respond to the comments of the relevant committee. The draft laws that the Committee on European Integration considers as the main committee mostly concern the ratification of Ukraine’s international treaties with the EU and its member states.

In July 2022, the Verkhovna Rada adopted Resolution No. 2483-IX, which provided for the establishment of European integration subcommittees in all parliamentary committeesNamely, subcommittees on the adaptation of Ukrainian legislation to the provisions of EU law (EU acquis) and on the fulfilment of Ukraine’s international legal commitments in the sphere of European integration. (other than the Committee on European Integration).

Committees took two approaches: most established new subcommittees, while a smaller number assigned the new areas of competence to existing subcommittees. As of 2026, such subcommittees have been created within all committees of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine; however, Members of Parliament rate their effectiveness as low.

Members of such a subcommittee take part in the meetings of the relevant Committee on European Integration and also hold meetings with the Government on European integration progress. At the same time, these subcommittees have not been given any new instruments for their work or for their participation in the European integration process. At the subcommittee level, there are no agreed approaches to assessing draft laws for compliance with the EU acquis, nor appropriate mechanisms for coordination between subcommittees or between a subcommittee and the Government, which results in varying levels of involvement. A subcommittee’s participation in preparing European integration laws often depends on the individual chairing it and on his/hers expertise and activity.

The institutional mechanism associated with the formation and implementation of state policy in the sphere of European integration has not undergone substantial change, despite progress in the negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the EU. This creates a gap in the inter-institutional coordination of Parliament and the Government and a mismatch between the political commitments undertaken and the actual capacity to fulfil them. A modern framework law on the principles of state policy in the sphere of European integration could help bridge this gap and ensure the implementation of the declared course towards EU membership.

The mechanism for informing the Verkhovna Rada introduced by Resolution No. 4912-IX should be supplemented with procedures for the mandatory consideration of the Government’s reports on the state of implementation of the National Adaptation Programme and of information on the European integration process. Such reports and information could be considered at meetings of the Committee on European integration, with the involvement of representatives of other committees, or at plenary sittings. These measures should ensure proper feedback and the broader involvement of Members of Parliament, as well as transparency and inclusiveness in decision-making in the sphere of European integration.

The Committee on European Integration should be more closely involved in the process of adopting European integration laws in the Verkhovna Rada. Other parliamentary committees should develop a mechanism to interact with the Committee on European Integration so that its assessment is taken into account when preparing draft laws for consideration at a plenary sitting of the Verkhovna Rada.

The Verkhovna Rada should also define standards for the operation of the European integration subcommittees and establish their systematic cooperation with the Committee on European Integration.

This infobrief was compiled with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the International Renaissance Foundation.