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.

The war has made weapons part of Ukrainian reality, and the state has a duty to address this. Even before 24 February 2022, experts estimated that civilians may have held between three and eight million illegal firearms. The number has since increased, with some weapons reaching civilians as a result of hostilities. Following the launch of the state firearms register in July 2023, citizens voluntarily declared around 22,000 firearms and the police seized a further 20,000. These measures, however, are only isolated responses to the circulation of weapons in Ukraine, a problem that will become more acute after the war. The central question is not whether weapons will be present in Ukrainian society, but whether the state can build a coherent and effective security architecture governed by law.

This is not only a domestic task, but also part of Ukraine’s EU integration commitments. On 14 July 2026, negotiations were opened with Ukraine on Cluster 6, ‘External Relations’, which covers foreign policy, security and defence. For a country at war, this is one of the most strategically important areas, as Ukraine’s resilience and defence capability depend directly on it.

Under this cluster, the EU expects Ukraine to adopt a national strategy and action plan to combat illicit trafficking in and possession of firearms, ammunition and explosives, with clear deadlines, funding and a clear division of responsibilities among public authorities. Adopting the relevant documents alone will not be enough: Ukraine must demonstrate tangible progress in implementing them. In other words, the EU expects a new system capable of effectively controlling weapons and the risks associated with them.

Ukraine cannot limit the question to whether weapons should be permitted or prohibited. The principal challenge is how to bring their presence under effective control, so that one person’s right to protection does not conflict with another’s right to life and the freedom to own weapons does not become immunity from rules and responsibility.

This must form the basis of a new state policy. A law on civilian firearms is necessary, but it is only the first step.

It is commonly claimed that civilian weapons are prohibited in Ukraine. This is not entirely accurate. Civilians may legally own hunting firearms (both smooth-bore and rifled), less-lethal weapons, bladed weapons such as hunting knives, stilettos and daggers and gas pistols. No special permit is required to own airguns or certain types of small-calibre weapons (up to 4 mm) chambered for Flobert rounds. These rules are established by an order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

For the duration of martial law, legislation also allows civilians to be issued firearms or retain firearms they have found in order to repel and deter Russia’s armed aggression. The exceptions are rifled weapons exceeding 12.7 mm in calibre, smooth-bore weapons of 23 mm or more, weapons assigned to military personnel or law enforcement officers and weapons used to commit a criminal offence.

The debate focuses almost entirely on whether civilians should be permitted to acquire and carry short-barrelled firearms, namely pistols and revolvers.

A total ban and completely uncontrolled access to weapons are both extremes. A complete restriction of this right may deter law-abiding citizens, but criminals, who by definition break the law, will seek ways to circumvent or manipulate the rules.

Supporters of a total ban generally argue that violent crime will inevitably rise in proportion to the number of weapons held by civilians. There are, however, no comprehensive studies establishing a direct relationship between these figures. Nor is there a common methodology that would allow these questions to be studied regularly and the results compared over time. There are therefore no sound grounds for claiming that the number of civilian-held weapons either worsens the crime situation in the country or makes public spaces safer.

During the war and in the post-war period, a total ban would naturally drive firearms further underground and increase illicit trafficking. Law enforcement agencies would then find it more difficult to control weapons and ensure public safety.

The state’s task is to build a system of rules under which the right to own weapons does not threaten public order or deprive others of a sense of security. Civilian firearms legislation must be balanced and any expansion of related rights should be introduced gradually, taking account of the country’s current security situation.

In addition to the requirements under Cluster 6 described above, control over the circulation of firearms is part of Ukraine’s commitments under Chapter 24, ‘Justice, Freedom and Security’, of Cluster 1, ‘Fundamentals of the Accession Process’. Ukraine must improve the legal framework governing the circulation of firearms, cooperation among law enforcement agencies and international cooperation in this area. Criminal liability for illicit arms trafficking must also be brought fully into line with the EU acquis and international law. The acquis (in full, acquis communautaire) comprises all binding EU rules, laws, principles, decisions, case law and obligations applicable to Member States and candidate countries — editor’s note.

Adopting laws alone will not be enough. Ukraine must demonstrate tangible progress in implementing them. The EU expects a new security architecture that fits organically into the wider European security space. These processes will therefore remain under close and continuous scrutiny by European partners throughout Ukraine’s EU accession negotiations.

In the European Union, the general rules governing civilians’ acquisition and possession of firearms are laid down in Directive (EU) 2021/555. It defines categories of firearms that may lawfully be acquired, carried and used, including for hunting or sport, and establishes rules on marking, control over their circulation and movement between EU Member States.

The Directive requires a register through which firearms can be identified and traced. Each state must also establish a system regulating firearms manufacturers, dealers and gunsmiths, including checks of their personal and professional integrity.

A person may obtain a licence to acquire and possess a firearm if they have good cause, have reached the required age and do not pose a danger to themselves or others. Checking a person only once when a permit is issued is not sufficient. Under European rules, the licence must be reviewed at least every five years. The system therefore contains safeguards that not only grant access to firearms, but also respond promptly when an owner no longer meets the established criteria.

The Directive also allows EU Member States to introduce stricter rules than those it sets.

Firearms legislation across Europe ranges from relatively liberal regimes to strict restrictions. Weapons are generally permitted for hunting or sporting purposes. Common standards apply, particularly to categories prohibited for civilian use and weapons whose acquisition or carrying requires a special licence.

Croatia, for example, permits concealed carry with a special authorisation. Austria permits concealed or open carry but carrying a weapon must not cause public alarm. Civilian carry is effectively prohibited in Norway, where only limited numbers of firearms may be acquired for hunting or sport. Only a few countries, including Finland, Czechia and Poland, expressly recognise firearms in legislation as a means of personal security.

There is no universal formula for regulating firearms and fully protecting society from the risks they create. Each state develops its own mechanisms and procedures in light of its national context. In every case, the objective is to develop a shared security architecture across Europe, not merely to grant a right to own weapons.

Ukraine has debated and attempted to adopt a firearms law for decades, but has still failed to reach a consensus. At least 20 draft laws on the subject have been registered in the Verkhovna Rada over the past 30 years. Each initiative prompted intense debate that ultimately failed to produce a legislative solution.

Under the Rule of Law Roadmap, a law regulating firearms and strengthening liability for violations in this area must be adopted by the fourth quarter of 2026.

Draft law No. 5708, which is currently under discussion, was adopted at first reading shortly before the full-scale invasion. It partly reflects European requirements, but requires further revision to make the system more effective and eliminate risks and loopholes through which unscrupulous applicants could obtain the right to own weapons. The draft law also fails to provide clear answers on certain procedures for obtaining a firearms owner’s certificate, the rules for carrying weapons and the designation of areas where firearms may not be carried.

The law will create only a general framework, which will not function without institutions, resources and daily practice. Its adoption must be followed by a lengthy implementation process: developing infrastructure and a system of cooperation among public authorities, the firearms industry and firearms owners, conducting public information campaigns, strengthening the state’s capacity to trace weapons, identify risks in time and prevent violent crime.

The permit procedure and subsequent control must be designed to prevent corruption loopholes. Work is also needed to shape public attitudes through information campaigns and training in the safe and responsible handling of firearms.

Firearms owners and those seeking to acquire a weapon must regard it not only as a means of protection, but also as a source of heightened risk. Training, clear procedures, regular monitoring and the inevitability of sanctions for violations must become integral elements of responsible firearms ownership.

The regulation of civilian firearms does not exist in a vacuum: weapons have already become part of life in Ukraine. Without a resilient security architecture, however, any decision to expand the right to own and carry them would be premature.

A firearms law would form the first level of that architecture. The second would consist of systemic changes in society that allow freedom and the right to protection to coexist with control and responsibility.

Ukraine must first improve and codify the existing rules without undermining the foundations of public safety. Once the system has been established and tested, the country can return to the debate on liberalising the carrying of handguns.

The well-known firearms manufacturer Samuel Colt is credited with saying that ‘the most important part of any firearm is its owner’s head’. A responsible attitude to weapons must become the foundation of Ukraine’s new reality.

On 15 May 2026, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine registered the Draft Law ‘On Amendments to the Law of Ukraine “On the Public Prosecutor’s Office” on Aligning the Functions of the Prosecution Service with the Constitution of Ukraine Regarding Representation of the Interests of the State in Court’ (Reg. No. 15253 of 15.05.2026).

The explanatory note to the draft law states that the relevant amendments to the law were developed to regulate the cases in which a prosecutor may represent the interests of the state in court and to eliminate the unconstitutional expansion of the functions of the prosecution service.

In view of this, the Draft Law proposes to:

1. set out Article 23 of the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Public Prosecutor’s Office’ in a new version, providing for representation by a prosecutor exclusively of the interests of the state and only in exceptional cases defined by law;
2. specify the scope of such exceptional cases, in particular in the field of objects of civil rights that are withdrawn from or restricted in civil circulation;
3. align the prosecutor’s procedural powers with procedural legislation and the principles of justice;
4. remove from legislation provisions on the prosecutor’s representation of the interests of citizens.

The Draft Law was developed to implement Decision of the Second Senate of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine No. 6-r(ІІ)/2025 of 3 December 2025, which found the function of representing the interests of the state in court to be inconsistent with the Constitution of Ukraine because an exceptional function had turned into a general rule, as the grounds for its exercise were not clearly defined by law.

The Constitutional Court of Ukraine states that ‘the failure to define in the Law the limits of discretion for the prosecutor and the court, which decide whether there are grounds for the prosecutor to represent the interests of the state in court, results in the possibility for these bodies to be guided essentially only by their own subjective understanding of what “does not exercise” or “improperly exercises” means. This indicates that the discretion of the prosecutor and the court arising from the content of the relevant provisions of the first paragraph of Part 3 Article 23 of the Law is such that its limits are not clearly and comprehensibly defined by the Law. As a result, an exceptional procedural instrument of the prosecution service has been transformed into a universal mechanism for representing the interests of the state in court, thereby expanding the content of the relevant constitutional function of the prosecution service’ (para. 7.2 of the Decision).

In turn, ‘[this] entails an out-of-court assessment by the prosecutor of the effectiveness of actions or the establishment of inaction by other public authorities outside the field of criminal law, whereas, in particular, in the field of criminal law there are already relevant mechanisms for the prosecution service to respond to cases where public authorities do not exercise or improperly exercise their functions to protect the interests of the state. This has created a mechanism, not provided for by the Constitution of Ukraine, through which the prosecution service may influence the exercise of powers by state authorities, local self-government bodies or other public authorities whose competence includes the relevant powers, and has nullified the requirement of Article 6 of the Constitution of Ukraine that each body exercise its powers independently within the limits defined by the Constitution of Ukraine’ (para. 7.3 of the Decision).

The issue of the constitutionality of these provisions in relation to the prosecutor’s representation of citizens’ interests in court remained outside the scope of this constitutional proceeding, in accordance with the principle of non ultra petita: the conclusions of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine (CCU) did not extend to this aspect of the representative function. At the same time, current legislation still contains provisions on the prosecutor’s representation of the interests of citizens in court, although after the 2016 constitutional reform, such a function is not provided for by Article 131-1 of the Constitution of Ukraine. Therefore, retaining these provisions in the Law violates the principle that the constitutionally defined functions of the prosecution service are exhaustive and contradicts the legal positions of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine prohibiting their expansion.

In the operative part of its Decision, the CCU postponed the loss of force of the provisions found unconstitutional until 1 January 2027. Within this period, the legislator must clearly define the grounds for representation; otherwise, the prosecution service will lose the possibility of representing the interests of the state.

The prosecution service’s representation of the interests of the state in court remains one of the debated issues in the context of prosecution reform and alignment of its functions with European standards.

Under paragraph 3, Part 1, Article 131 of the Constitution of Ukraine, the prosecution service represents the interests of the state in court in exceptional cases and in the manner defined by law. This constitutional model was introduced in 2016 as part of justice reform with the aim of substantially limiting powers that are not inherent in the prosecution service but had previously existed.

Historically, the representative function of the prosecution service in Ukraine developed as an element of the Soviet model of the prosecutor’s office, which provided for broad supervisory powers outside criminal justice. Within this model, the prosecution service acted as a universal instrument for protecting state interests in various areas of public administration.

In fact, the Venice Commission issued an opinion on the function of prosecutors in representing the interests of the state and citizens in court as early as 2013, when analysing the then draft of the current Law of Ukraine ‘On the Public Prosecutor’s Office’.

The Venice Commission drew attention to the fact that the function of representing the ‘interests of the state in court’ was formulated too broadly, since such interests could theoretically cover any matter that, in the opinion of the state authorities, concerns the performance of their functions or is of significance for the state in general, even where it concerns specific legal rights and obligations of private persons or organisations.

Although Article 24 of the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Public Prosecutor’s Office’ to some extent limits the scope of this provision in cases where this function is delegated to a state authority other than the prosecution service, the range of interests that the prosecution service may represent remains undefined.

Thus, until this function is fully abolished, the Venice Commission considers it appropriate to clearly define the range of interests that the prosecution service may represent. To this end, the functions of the prosecution service should be limited to representing interests concerning only matters of a moral or public-policy nature, exclusively in cases where it is necessary to protect specific rights of the state provided by law.

In addition, the Venice Commission drew attention to the absence of any indication that representation by prosecutors of the interests of the state is excluded in the case of state-owned companies. This provision may therefore be interpreted as allowing prosecutors to act on behalf of such companies, which would be entirely inappropriate given the role assigned to their management.

Accordingly, even at the stage when the modern legislative model of the prosecution service was being formed, the Venice Commission expressed a rather restrained and, in a certain sense, sceptical position regarding the granting of a broad representative function to the prosecution service. The proposed approach envisaged its significant narrowing and the clearest possible definition of the limits of its application.

In modern democratic systems, this model is gradually being recognised as incompatible with the principle of separation of powers and the role of the prosecution service as an institution of criminal justice.

International standards also proceed from the need to limit the functions of the prosecution service to the field of criminal prosecution. In particular, Recommendation No. 1604 (2003) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe states that prosecutors’ functions should be focused on prosecuting persons guilty of committing criminal offences, while separate competent bodies should be created to perform other functions.

At the same time, Opinion No. 3 (2008) of the Consultative Council of European Prosecutors (CCPE) recognises that, in some states, prosecutors may perform functions outside criminal justice. However, in such cases these powers must be clearly defined by law, be exceptional in nature and must not create a privileged position for the prosecutor in court proceedings.

A similar approach is reflected in Recommendation Rec(2012)11 of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on the role of public prosecutors outside the criminal justice system, which emphasises that such powers must be clearly regulated, exercised in compliance with the principle of equality of arms and must not disturb the balance between participants in court proceedings.

The European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission), when analysing amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine in 2015, also emphasised that representation of the interests of the state by a prosecutor should remain a residual and exceptional power, applied only where other mechanisms for protecting state interests are absent or ineffective.

Thus, the constitutional model of the prosecution service introduced in Ukraine in 2016 effectively provides for a subsidiary role of the prosecutor in representing the interests of the state. The prosecution service should intervene only where the relevant state authorities or other entities authorised by law to protect such interests do not exercise or improperly exercise their powers.

In practice, the function of representing the interests of the state continues to be applied quite broadly, although it is regarded as a temporary or transitional mechanism stemming from the particular features of the development of the state’s institutional system. In the long term, protection of the interests of the state should be carried out primarily by the relevant state authorities, which are the holders of these interests and have the necessary powers.

At the same time, the data in the 2025 Report of the Prosecutor General’s Office show that, in conditions where authorised bodies were ineffective or inactive, prosecutors filed claims concerning financial assets worth more than UAH 33.8 billion. The value of assets in respect of which courts issued decisions satisfying prosecutors’ claims amounted to UAH 1.5 billion, while the value of assets whose alienation was prevented in satisfied and closed cases amounted to UAH 13 billion. The value of assets in respect of which actual enforcement of court decisions was secured amounted to UAH 215.2 million. During 2025, particular attention was paid to protecting the interests of the state in budgetary legal relations, where the effectiveness of the measures taken has a direct impact on the ability of the state and local self-government bodies to finance priority needs. In other words, the representative function is actively performed by the prosecution service, while at the level of state policy no plans to limit it have been voiced since 2016.

As already mentioned, in Decision No. 6-р(ІІ)/2025 of 3 December 2025, the CCU stated that cases of representation must be objectively exceptional, clearly defined by law, reduced to the minimum necessary and perceived precisely as exceptions, rather than as a general rule for the prosecution service’s participation in court proceedings.

The Constitutional Court also drew attention to the fact that current legislative regulation does not ensure sufficient legal certainty regarding the limits of the prosecutor’s discretion in deciding whether to apply to court in the interests of the state. In particular, the possibility of representation in cases where the relevant state authority or local self-government body ‘does not exercise’ or ‘improperly exercises’ protection of the interests of the state effectively leaves the prosecutor and the court with excessively broad scope for subjective interpretation of these grounds. In the Court’s view, this uncertainty results in the exceptional procedural instrument of the prosecution service being transformed into a universal mechanism for representing the interests of the state in court, thereby expanding the content of the relevant constitutional function.

In view of this, the Court found unconstitutional certain provisions of the first paragraph of Part 3 Article 23 of the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Public Prosecutor’s Office’ in the part allowing the prosecutor to represent the interests of the state in connection with the failure or improper exercise of their protection by other public authorities. At the same time, the Court postponed the loss of force of these provisions until 1 January 2027, taking into account, in particular, the need to ensure continuity in the performance of the prosecution service’s functions under martial law.

Problems in defining the limits of the prosecution service’s representative powers are also evident in case law. Thus, in the ruling of the Commercial Cassation Court within the Supreme Court of 15 January 2026 in case No. 921/190/25, it was confirmed that specialised prosecutors’ offices in the defence sector may represent the interests of the state only within legal relations related to the defence sector. The Court emphasised that subordinate acts, including orders of the Prosecutor General, may not expand the powers of prosecution bodies beyond the limits defined by law. Accordingly, the claim filed by a specialised prosecutor’s office in the defence sector in a case concerning environmental damage and the interests of a local self-government body was found to have been submitted by a person without proper authority.

4.1. A positive aspect of the draft law is the very attempt to specify in legislation the list of cases in which a prosecutor may represent the interests of the state (the proposed wording of Part 2 Article 23 of the Draft Law). This approach generally corresponds to the legal position of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine on the need for a clear and predictable algorithm for determining exceptional grounds for the prosecution service to exercise this function. The draft law exhaustively and specifically defines the grounds and sources from which a prosecutor may obtain the information necessary to represent the interests of the state in court and establishes a clear procedure for the prosecutor’s actions.

4.2. The proposed exclusion from legislation of provisions on the prosecutor’s representation of the interests of citizens in court also deserves a positive assessment. Although this component of the representative function is mentioned in Article 23 of the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Public Prosecutor’s Office’, it falls outside the scope of constitutional regulation and is a remnant of the previous powers of prosecution bodies.

After the 2016 constitutional reform, the function of representing the interests of citizens no longer belongs to the constitutionally defined functions of the prosecution service provided for in Article 131-1 of the Constitution of Ukraine. Therefore, further preservation of the relevant provisions in the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Public Prosecutor’s Office’ effectively contradicts the principle that the constitutional powers of the prosecution service are exhaustive and is inconsistent with the legal positions of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine on the inadmissibility of expanding the functions of the prosecution service by law.

In this respect, the draft law demonstrates the correct approach to aligning legislation with the Constitution of Ukraine and the logic of the 2014–2016 prosecution reform, which was aimed at gradually abandoning non-criminal functions not inherent in the prosecution service.

In addition, removing the function of representing the interests of citizens is consistent with Council of Europe international standards and the recommendations of the Venice Commission, according to which the prosecution service should focus primarily on functions in the field of criminal justice, while protection of the rights and interests of private individuals should be ensured through the free legal aid system, the Bar and other specially authorised institutions.

4.3. Concerning the cases in which the representative function may be exercised.

Despite certain positive aspects of the draft law, namely the attempt to specify the grounds for representation in legislation and to align certain provisions of the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Public Prosecutor’s Office’ with the Constitution of Ukraine, the proposed wording as a whole gives rise to a number of significant reservations and requires further revision.

Despite formally enshrining the ‘exceptional’ nature of representation, the proposed list of cases in which a prosecutor may represent the interests of the state in court covers an extremely broad range of legal relations and largely restores the possibility of systemic intervention by the prosecution service in public administration outside criminal justice.

In particular, this concerns such grounds as ‘violation of fundamental national interests’, ‘strategic nationwide priorities’, ‘a conflict of powers’ between authorities, the ‘inability independently to protect’ the interests of the state by the relevant body and the prosecutor’s detection of facts indicating a violation or threat of violation of the interests of the state while exercising procedural guidance over a pre-trial investigation.

In effect, this model contributes to an even greater expansion of the limits of the prosecution service’s participation outside criminal justice.

The proposed wording of Part 2 Article 23 of the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Public Prosecutor’s Office’ defines nine cases in which a prosecutor may represent the interests of the state:

1. violation or threat of violation of the fundamental national interests of Ukraine or strategic nationwide priorities defined by law;
2. violation or threat of violation of the interests of the state concerning objects of ownership of the Ukrainian people or objects of civil rights that are under special state protection, whose preservation is guaranteed by the state and which, under the law, are withdrawn from civil circulation or have limited transferability;
3. absence of a state authority, local self-government body or other legal entity under public law that is authorised by law to protect the interests of the state in court, or absence of powers of such entities to apply to court with the relevant procedural document in the disputed legal relations;
4. violation of the interests of the state by a state authority, local self-government body or other legal entity under public law whose powers include judicial protection of such interests of the state;
5. existence of a conflict of powers between state authorities, local self-government bodies and other legal entities under public law regarding their protection of the interests of the state within their competence;
6. damage caused to the interests of the state by a criminal offence or other socially dangerous act where a civil claim in criminal proceedings was not or could not be filed or was left without consideration;
7. detection by the prosecutor, while exercising procedural guidance over a pre-trial investigation or participating in criminal or administrative proceedings regardless of their outcome, of facts indicating a violation or threat of violation of the interests of the state requiring judicial protection;
8. an application by a state authority, local self-government body or other legal entity under public law requesting the filing of a claim due to its inability independently to protect the interests of the state;
9. cases concerning the recognition of assets as unjustified and their recovery for the benefit of the state.

Within this list, particular reservations arise in relation to paragraph 5, which allows a prosecutor to represent the interests of the state where there is a conflict of powers between state authorities, local self-government bodies and other legal entities under public law concerning their protection of the interests of the state.

In essence, a conflict of powers is the result of imperfect legislative regulation of the delimitation of competences of the relevant public authorities. Identifying and eliminating such conflicts should be carried out primarily at the normative level by clarifying legislation and properly delimiting the powers of the relevant entities, rather than being resolved in each specific case on the basis of a discretionary decision by the prosecutor that there are grounds to represent the interests of the state in court.

Given the absence of clear criteria for the concept of a ‘conflict of powers’, this ground is excessively evaluative in nature and creates a risk of further expanding prosecutorial discretion beyond the constitutional model of exceptional and subsidiary representation of the interests of the state.

Paragraph 7 of Part 2 Article 23 of the Draft Law provides that a ground for the prosecutor’s representation of the interests of the state is the prosecutor’s detection, while exercising procedural guidance over a pre-trial investigation or participating in criminal or administrative proceedings, of facts indicating a violation or threat of violation of the interests of the state requiring judicial protection.

In effect, the proposed model legalises the possibility for a prosecutor to initiate representation of the interests of the state in virtually any area of public-law relations if the prosecutor independently detects a potential violation of the ‘interests of the state’ while exercising other prosecutorial powers.

Taking into account the extremely broad and evaluative nature of the concept in paragraph 1 of Part 2 of the same Article, namely ‘violation or threat of violation of the fundamental national interests of Ukraine or strategic nationwide priorities’, this model creates a risk of significantly expanding prosecutorial discretion and effectively returning the prosecution service to quasi-supervisory functions.

In essence, this creates a mechanism whereby any criminal or administrative proceedings could potentially become a basis for further intervention by the prosecution service in the activities of state authorities, local self-government bodies or other public-law entities through the mechanism of representing the interests of the state in court.

4.4. Concerning the grounds for representation.

Part 3 of the proposed wording of the above-mentioned Article of the draft law provides an exhaustive list of triggers for initiating the establishment of grounds for representing the interests of the state in court:

1. information obtained in the course of exercising the prosecutor’s powers;
2. information received by prosecution bodies from state authorities, local self-government bodies and other legal entities under public law;
3. applications by individuals and legal entities, MPs of Ukraine, deputies of the Verkhovna Rada of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, members of local councils and associations of citizens;
4. public information and publications in the media.

The provision allowing a prosecutor to exercise representation where facts indicating a violation of the interests of the state are identified from public information and media publications as a trigger for verifying whether grounds exist for representation deserves particular attention. Despite the formal prohibition on independent information searches, this model effectively endows the prosecution service with a function of monitoring the legality of the activities of authorities and other public-law actors. It brings the prosecution service closer to the functionality typical of so-called ‘general supervision’, which Ukraine officially abandoned as a result of the 2014 prosecution reform and the 2016 constitutional amendments.

As a result, there is a risk that instead of implementing the decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine on narrowing and clearly limiting the representative function of the prosecution service, the proposed draft law will effectively create a new, much more detailed yet broad model of prosecutorial participation in protecting state interests in court.

4.5. Additional reservations also arise in relation to paragraph 8 of Part 2 Article 23 of the Draft Law, under which a prosecutor may represent the interests of the state on the basis of a request by a state authority, local self-government body or other legal entity under public law due to its inability independently to protect the interests of the state.

The proposed construction creates a risk of formally legitimising the prosecutor’s involvement in any category of disputes at the prosecutor’s own initiative.

In particular, a prosecutor may independently identify, at their own discretion, a potential violation of the ‘interests of the state’ while exercising other powers, after which the prosecution service’s further entry into the case may be formally justified by obtaining the relevant letter or request from a state authority or other public-law entity.

In the absence of clear criteria for the concept of ‘inability independently to protect the interests of the state’, this model effectively allows the application of the relevant body to be used not as an exceptional mechanism but as an instrument for procedurally legitimising an intervention already initiated by the prosecution service.

As a result, there is a risk that the representative function of the prosecution service may be transformed from a subsidiary and exceptional mechanism into a universal form of prosecutorial participation in public-law disputes.

4.6. Analysis of the proposed amendments shows that the actual focus of the draft law does not fully correspond to the legal position of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, which determined that the purpose of further amendments to the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Public Prosecutor’s Office’ should be precisely to narrow and clearly limit the grounds for the prosecutor’s representation of the interests of the state in court, minimise prosecutorial discretion and ensure the exceptional and subsidiary nature of this function.

Even at the stage of preparing the current Law of Ukraine ‘On the Public Prosecutor’s Office’, the Venice Commission drew attention to the excessive breadth of the concept of ‘interests of the state’, which creates a risk of unduly expanding the role of the prosecution service outside criminal justice. Council of Europe international standards consistently proceed from the premise that criminal prosecution should remain the main function of the prosecution service, while the performance of other functions is permissible only in exceptional cases and provided that they are clearly regulated by law.

The 2014–2016 constitutional reform of the prosecution service was aimed precisely at transforming the prosecution service into a criminal justice body that operates as closely as possible to European standards, while taking into account the domestic specificities of the justice system. In this context, representation of the interests of the state in court was intended to become exceptional, subsidiary and residual in nature.

Therefore, further legislative regulation of the representative function of the prosecution service should not proceed by normatively defining the broadest possible range of grounds for representation but, on the contrary, by substantially narrowing them, defining them clearly and minimising prosecutorial discretion in accordance with the Constitution of Ukraine, the decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine and international standards.

In the long term, representation of the interests of the state by a prosecutor in court should be regarded as a temporary, exceptional and residual mechanism that will gradually lose its significance as the prosecution service of Ukraine continues its institutional evolution and moves closer to the European model of a criminal justice body. Although European standards do not prohibit the prosecution service from performing functions outside the criminal justice system, such functions should be minimal. Instead, executive authorities, administrative justice and other instruments outside the field of public prosecution should meet the need to protect human rights.

We consider that Draft Law No. 15253 of 15.05.2026 requires further revision in terms of narrowing the grounds for representation. The proposed detailed list of grounds for representation does not narrow them compared with the current Article 23 of the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Public Prosecutor’s Office’; rather, it preserves them in the same scope or even expands them, which was the very subject of the unconstitutionality established by the CCU in Decision No. 6-r(ІІ)/2025 of 3 December 2025. The relevant grounds may be narrowed during finalisation of the Draft Law for the second reading or by withdrawing the Draft Law and submitting a revised version in its place.

Much has been said about the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) concerning former judge Oleksii Tandyr — primarily in terms of a possible opportunity for Tandyr to evade liability in the case concerning a fatal drink-driving road accident. However, at most, the judgment allows for a review of the preventive measure applied to the former judge, taking into account the ECtHR’s critical remarks. The case will continue to be examined by the court. Therefore, hope for justice — remains.

At the same time, the judgment once again highlighted a whole ‘bouquet’ of problems within the criminal justice system — excessive length of judicial proceedings, detention without proper substantiation of the risks of absconding from trial and similar issues. Moreover, it is not an isolated case: previously, the ECtHR had already drawn attention to the problem of the quality of reasoning in decisions on pre-trial detention, specifically in the case of Ignatov v. Ukraine (2016), while such problems had also existed under the old Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine (CPC of Ukraine) of 1960 — Kharchenko v. Ukraine (2011).

What should be changed to reduce the number of ECtHR judgments against Ukraine? Yevhen Krapyvin, Head of the ‘Law and Order’ Area at the Agency for Legislative Initiatives, draws attention to the following:

1. The problem lies in the length of investigations and insufficient control over the implementation of preventive measures in criminal proceedings (primarily detention). First and foremost — and most simply — amendments should be introduced to the CPC of Ukraine to ensure that, at the trial stage, a 12-month limit applies to the maximum duration of this preventive measure, including any extensions (by analogy with the pre-trial investigation stage). At present, the average duration of court proceedings in cases concerning serious and especially serious crimes amounts to 3–5 years, or even longer. It is also necessary to consider current conditions, where the length of proceedings is extended due to a shortage of judges, air raid alerts leading to adjournments of hearings and similar factors.
2. Another problem concerns the abuse of procedural rights by the parties to criminal proceedings. The CPC of Ukraine addresses abuse of rights only in relation to motions for recusal and excessively lengthy opening statements. In all other instances — failure of all defence counsel to appear, ‘flooding’ the court with identical motions, various attempts to delay the judicial proceedings — such conduct effectively remains the ‘norm’ in criminal procedure. Unfortunately, the disciplinary bodies of the prosecution service or the Bar respond to such behaviour extremely moderately and interpret violations of professional ethics in a very limited manner. As a result, criminal proceedings that could — and should, as a matter of priority — be examined within one year may instead last five, or even ten, years.
3. Another shortcoming is the excessive workload of forensic institutions, which may take months to complete even the simplest expert examinations. This significantly slows down criminal proceedings. Even more problematic is the availability of alternative and repeated expert examinations. Of course, the parties are entitled to request them, and this corresponds to the adversarial principle of criminal procedure. However, in practice, this often leads to unlawful conduct by specialists, as improper influence on expert institutions remains widespread. It is precisely for this reason that NABU and SAPO increasingly speak of the need for an ‘independent examination’, while the Ministry of Justice is working to improve forensic activities. State strategic policy documents provide for a review of the legislative framework in this field, so that law enforcement bodies may gain access to ‘high-quality, objective and prompt forensic examination’. This includes the introduction of a new system for licensing experts, ensuring the functioning of expert self-governance, expanding the types of examinations that private forensic experts may conduct, digitalisation of forensic activities and similar measures.
4. Another problem concerns supervision over compliance with preventive measures, that is, the functioning of a law enforcement structure capable of monitoring compliance with the obligations imposed — not to tamper with evidence, not to communicate with certain individuals, to remain within a specified territory and similar requirements. While the latter may still be monitored, the destruction of evidence, pressure on victims and witnesses, or the possibility of committing other offences are difficult to prevent due to the lack of time and resources within the police. Alternatives may include house arrest or bail, yet even these provide only weak guarantees of the suspect’s or accused’s participation in criminal proceedings, as the law enforcement infrastructure in this segment remains underdeveloped — and there is no corresponding demand for its development. Judges, for their part, are more inclined to order detention wherever possible. Any other decision concerning a less restrictive preventive measure will inevitably be met with allegations of ‘evasion of justice’ and may provoke public outrage.

Amendments to legislation resolve this systemic problem only partially. It is also advisable to change attitudes towards alternative preventive measures to detention that are not associated with restrictions on freedom of movement. This would contribute to addressing the problem. At the same time — strict supervision must be ensured in relation to house arrest, bail and other measures designed to prevent pressure on witnesses or victims, destruction of evidence or absconding. In other words, preventive measures must achieve their purpose — ensuring the participation of the accused and preserving the evidentiary basis necessary to establish a person’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

The 14th session of the Verkhovna Rada of the 9th convocation has begun. The start of each parliamentary season always renews expectations of MPs — both regarding new draft laws and legislative initiatives whose consideration has been suspended or has stalled altogether for various reasons and factors.

However, the postponement of strategically important draft laws cannot be blurred into an abstract ‘not the right time’. So which initiatives should MPs consider first?

The Government’s Programme of Activities is the main document for planning state policy. It forms the basis for the Government’s medium-term action plans (for a three-year period) and its priority action plans (for a period of up to one year). The adoption of such a Programme should not be perceived as a mere formality: this document occupies a central place in the entire structure of Ukraine’s state policy and is an important component of parliamentary oversight. In its absence, it is in fact impossible to assess the Government’s performance, since there are no goals or objectives against which this can be done. Indeed, we already have such a precedent: in 2020, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal presented his Programme of Activities, which the Verkhovna Rada sent for revision, but which was never approved. Thus, the previous Government operated without an adopted Programme for more than five years.

On 18 August 2025, Prime Minister of Ukraine Yuliia Svyrydenko, together with members of the Cabinet of Ministers, presented the Draft Programme of Action of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine for 2025–2026. But the presentation itself is not enough. The Draft must now be submitted to Parliament for consideration — that is, either to be approved or rejected.

The Agency for Legislative Initiatives was involved in the development of this draft law — it is currently under review by the Committee on Social Policy and Protection of Veterans’ Rights. At this stage, however, it is important to continue working on improving its provisions, discussing and refining them. First, because there are indeed many problems accumulated in the sphere of veteran policy, and they are often systemic in nature, which means that solutions should not be piecemeal but comprehensive.

Work on the draft law needs to be resumed, since oversight of the security and defence sector makes it possible to ensure the rule of law, legality, accountability and transparency of the institutions of the security and defence sector.

The need to adopt an ethical code is highlighted by each successive scandal involving Members of Parliament. Moreover, holding individual MPs to account, whose behaviour discredits the only legislative body of Ukraine, is critically important for restoring its credibility. One need only recall July of this year, when certain MPs outraged the public with their undisguised joy after the vote on Draft Law No. 12414.

Such a code should define the rules of conduct for Members of Parliament in the plenary chamber, in other working bodies of Parliament and, importantly, outside it. The need to adopt an ethical code has been raised since 2016 — in particular, it is one of the recommendations of the Roadmap on Parliamentary Reform. A draft resolution is already before the Verkhovna Rada: at the end of 2022, Draft Law No. 8327 was registered, which is intended to modernise the current rules of parliamentary ethics and create an effective system for their implementation. This will not only separate out unworthy manifestations of behaviour by individual MPs but will also be one of the steps towards increasing trust in Parliament.

Improving the procedures for adapting Ukraine’s legislation to the European Union acquis is one of the key directions of Ukraine’s European integration course. This is important above all for monitoring and screening the reforms being implemented by Ukraine, as mentioned in the recommendations and Roadmaps from the European Union.

Continuing work on the draft law that brings legislation closer in the context of negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the EU must remain in the focus of the Verkhovna Rada and be supported at the level of all parliamentary Committees without exception.

The draft law is intended to reinstate the mandatory competition for appointment to the position of prosecutor in prosecution offices of all levels, conducted by the Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of Prosecutors (QDCP). It also proposes to repeal other negative changes introduced by Law No. 4555-IX: granting the Prosecutor General oversight powers, bypassing the independent prosecutor-procedural supervisor in criminal proceedings, and providing additional grounds for dismissing ‘disloyal’ prosecutors through structural changes.

Among other things, the draft law provides for measures to improve the operation of criminal justice bodies, primarily of anti-corruption specialisation.

The Agency for Legislative Initiatives consistently supports the introduction of the Legislative Impact Assessment tool in the law-making activity of the Ukrainian Parliament, in particular, helping to integrate it into the work of parliamentary Committees and the Secretariat of the Verkhovna Rada. This is a structured tool through which the future consequences and likely impacts of proposed decisions can be identified and assessed.

Impact Assessment is mentioned in the Roadmap on Public Administration Reform and the Roadmap on the Functioning of Democratic Institutions, which was created in preparation for negotiations with the European Union on concluding the Agreement on Ukraine’s accession to the EU. Conducting an Impact Assessment is also required by the Law of Ukraine ‘On Lawmaking’, adopted in 2023. But since the Law will take effect one year after martial law is lifted, Parliament has so far been in no hurry to apply the tool of Legislative Impact Assessment systematically, and it still remains ad hoc. Nevertheless, understanding the principles and practice of applying Impact Assessment is important for everyone involved in developing legislation, especially in the context of continuing parliamentary reform.    

The organisation of recruitment for civil service positions remains one of the most problematic areas in public administration. At the same time, the draft law provides for the phased resumption of competitions for civil service positions, which is critically important for relaunching the process of renewing staff in the public sector.

It was developed as an alternative to the government draft, which was withdrawn due to the change in the composition of the Government.

More on what this draft law seeks to address is noted by the Agency for Legislative Initiatives in its infobrief on the issue of a politically neutral civil service.

The draft law concerns problems that require urgent resolution at the legislative level, and delaying its consideration is truly unacceptable. At present, the draft law is under review in the relevant Committee and requires further refinement, but its adoption is very important for adapting the state secrets protection system to wartime conditions.

In particular, the draft law regulates such issues as:

• speeding up, during martial law, the classification of information as state secrets;
• revising approaches to the functioning of the clearance system (risk-based approach);
• updating the mechanisms of information exchange between bodies during security checks related to clearance for state secrets and the granting of special permits for activities connected with state secrets.

This draft law grants the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) the authority to develop and submit to the President of Ukraine and the Government draft regulatory acts on matters within the competence of the SSU.

It was adopted as a basis at first reading in April 2025, and there are no critical comments on the content of the draft law. Therefore, its final adoption must also be a priority since it will contribute to the preparation of timely decisions, particularly in ensuring the protection of state secrets.

During the war, Ukraine faces systemic threats and heightened enemy interest in information constituting state secrets — and therefore delaying the adoption of these draft laws, which is certainly not in the interests of the state.

The advancement of the initiatives listed above in Parliament is important for timely responses to all the challenges Ukraine faces under martial law. An updated agenda makes it possible to focus on priority tasks and not postpone important decisions ‘for later’, when the issue will become acute and inevitably require an immediate response.

On Thursday, the Verkhovna Rada adopted the presidential draft law and restored the procedural independence of the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) and National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU).

The protesters’ demands have been met, but public congratulations on the victory evoke mixed feelings: after all, the authorities first created the problem themselves, only to then fix it.

But did they fix it?

While public attention was focused on the ‘reversal’ of the rules concerning anti-corruption bodies, the law of 22 July introduced broader negative changes. The procedural independence of the SAPO was successfully defended, but the same independence of other prosecutors was not. The strengthening of the role of the Prosecutor General in relation to other prosecutors (except anti-corruption prosecutors) remains in force. Similarly, the rules concerning personnel issues in the prosecutor’s office remain unchanged. 

And this is bad for European integration. Here is why.

First of all, it should be emphasised that the changes that undermined the independence of the SAPO and NABU have indeed been repealed. The compromise added to the legislation, primarily to allow the authorities to save face and continue to claim that this was a ‘fight against russian influence’, was a provision requiring all law enforcement officers and prosecutors to undergo polygraph tests.

At the same time, Law No. 4555-IX of 22 July also amended the Law on the Prosecutor’s Office. Most of these amendments remain in force.

Firstly, during martial law, the competition requirements have been abolished — anyone with a law degree can be hired for a position in the Prosecutor General’s Office or the regional prosecutor’s office.

Secondly, the law undermines the guarantees of institutional independence of prosecutors: anyone can be dismissed through the mechanism of liquidation or reorganisation of prosecution authorities. Now every prosecutor will think twice before making a decision that does not align with the ‘correct vision of the leadership’.

Thirdly, the Prosecutor General has been given new procedural powers that further strengthen his influence over all prosecutors. Now he is free to ‘request’ the necessary proceedings for verification, which completely stops the movement within the proceedings and allows the Prosecutor General to give instructions directly to the investigator, bypassing the prosecutor handling the case.

In addition, the polygraph testing mechanism is designed in such a way that it can be turned into another tool for putting pressure on undesirable prosecutors. The law states that polygraph testing must be conducted ’at least once every two years’. Let us leave aside questions about the quality of this method and the fact that the law leaves both the content of the test and the procedure for action if the test is negative undefined. But will this not become a kind of psychological pressure mechanism on disloyal prosecutors, who could be sent to the polygraph even every week?

However, the first three points pose the most real threats, including to Ukraine’s European path.

Let us explain each of them, as well as the connection between the amendments to the Law ‘On the Prosecutor’s Office’ and Ukraine’s European integration.

The law of 22 July contains a provision regarding the prosecutor’s office, which will supposedly only apply during martial law (although this is not entirely true; more on this below).

This provision allows anyone with a university degree and legal experience — five years for the Prosecutor General’s Office and three years for regional prosecutor’s offices — to be appointed to the Prosecutor General’s Office and regional prosecutor’s offices without competition.

Paradoxically, however, selection for lower-level prosecutor’s offices is competitive, with the independent Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of Public Prosecutors (QDCPP) playing a role. Similarly, the procedure for appointing a trainee prosecutor, which used to be the starting point for a career as a prosecutor, has remained unchanged.  

And only in the top prosecutor’s office does martial law, so to speak, force the selection of employees to bypass procedures, simply by the decision of the head of the prosecutor’s office.

This norm returns to the Prosecutor General and the heads of regional prosecutor’s offices the powers they once had long ago, before 2014, taking them away from the de facto self-government body — the QDCPP.

The competition for the position of prosecutor was introduced as part of the reform promoted by the Council of Europe and the EU, as was the establishment of the QDCPP, which began operating in 2017. Its abolition is not only a corruption risk, but also a significant step backwards in European integration.

Firstly, the Rule of Law Roadmap (approved by the Government in May this year) declares the strengthening of the institutional capacity of the prosecutor’s self-government bodies and the QDCPP. Now, contrary to these commitments, Ukraine is not only failing to strengthen the QDCPP but is also taking away its powers.

Secondly, we have committed to the EU that competitions for senior positions in the prosecution authorities will become mandatory in the first quarter of 2026. Instead, we are abolishing competitions altogether.

The authorities will clearly insist that this is a temporary measure for the duration of martial law. However, this is not entirely true: when martial law ends, prosecutors recruited without competition will not be dismissed from the prosecution authorities.

The argument that martial law prevents the selection of people for the prosecutor’s office is easily refuted by the fact that since 2022, about 300 people have joined the prosecutor’s office as a result of the competition.

These amendments to Articles 41, 51 and 60 of the Law on the Prosecutor’s Office are even more complex and therefore went largely unnoticed.

There is an additional factor here — last year’s decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, which came into force in June. The Constitutional Court defended prosecutors who found themselves ‘out of office’.

Let us explain what this means. Prosecutors are appointed to their positions for an indefinite term, and except in special cases (retirement, disciplinary action, etc.), they cannot be dismissed. This guarantees prosecutors’ independence, allowing them to make decisions at their own discretion without fear of pressure from politicians, procedural opponents or their superiors.

However, after these guarantees were introduced into the law, the heads of the prosecution authorities learned to circumvent them: it is enough to reorganise the department, remove people ‘out of office’, create a new staff list and appoint only those prosecutors who correspond to the ‘vision’ of the new head.

Unfortunately, this is a common practice.

People who are ‘out of office’ have prosecutor status, receive salaries, but are deprived of any powers and find themselves in an uncertain legal status — until they resign or until the head changes their mind. In practice, this means until you ‘come to an agreement’ with them or until a new leader arrives.

Therefore, the Constitutional Court ruled that such an undefined status is unconstitutional and eliminated the possibility of ‘removing from office’ altogether. 

Law No. 4555-IX creatively reinterpreted the Constitutional Court’s decision and did something that contradicts its conclusions.

It provided for a mechanism for responding to situations where prosecutors find themselves ‘out of office’, significantly worsening the situation of those to whom this hidden punishment was applied: now, prosecutors who find themselves in this situation can be offered a position, and if they refuse, they can be dismissed on this basis.

Formally, the Constitutional Court’s decision has been implemented (there is a mechanism to combat the phenomenon of ‘prosecutors out of office’). In reality, however, this gives the green light for ‘personnel purges’: it is enough to offer a position at the lowest level or with working conditions that the disgraced prosecutor will certainly not agree to.

Therefore, these changes should not simply be cancelled. It is necessary to comply in good faith with the Constitutional Court’s decision and introduce a procedure for changing the structure that would allow prosecutors to continue their work.

Although we have noted the need for independence of prosecutors, who, according to the European approach, are part of the justice system, this independence is not absolute, unlike the work of judges. Senior heads of prosecution authorities have a number of procedural powers over lower-level prosecutors.

However, this does not mean that a supervising prosecutor can interfere in any proceedings without justification or halt their progress. And even more so, they cannot give instructions bypassing the prosecutor in charge of the case.

Instead, Law No. 4555-IX gave the Prosecutor General the right to ‘request’ materials, documents and other information from the prosecutor relating to any pre-trial investigation and to transfer them to third prosecutors for review. The presidential draft law adopted on 31 July left these provisions unchanged (the relevant powers of the Prosecutor General were excluded only in relation to NABU and SAPO).

In practice, this means that the Prosecutor General now has the ability to block any investigation or, worse, to give instructions directly to the investigator, bypassing the prosecutor who is the procedural supervisor. It turns out that this prosecutor will formally remain assigned to the case, but without the authority to influence it.

At the same time, the conditional prosecutor in charge of the procedural management of the conditional Chernyshov case may remain the prosecutor, but the Prosecutor General will have full control over the case.

How did it work before?

Previously, there was also a way to control and influence the case, but instructions were given only to the prosecutor and only in writing, and it was up to them to implement them. And in order to ‘take away’ the proceedings from the prosecutor, there had to be a reasoned decision to remove them from the case. In other words, there were safeguards against abuse and documentary evidence, which enabled the conduct of an official investigation in the event of improper actions. 

However, all powers are now concentrated in the hands of one person, namely the Prosecutor General, who, let us recall, is appointed politically without any competition and remains politically dependent. Incidentally, the European Commission and the Council of Europe systematically criticise both the politicised appointment procedure and the possibility of dismissing the Prosecutor General by a vote of no confidence, which can be passed by a simple majority in Parliament.

It is precisely because of the political dependence of the Prosecutor General, i.e., because Parliament can ‘keep him on the hook’ by threatening dismissal, that Ukraine, on the recommendation of its European partners, has carried out reforms that have gradually reduced the powers of the Prosecutor General.

These reforms remain important for Ukraine’s compliance with Chapter 23 during the accession negotiations with the EU. However, due to the fact that Parliament adopted these norms on 22 July and the presidential draft law, voted on 31 July, did not repeal them, we are clearly moving in the opposite direction.

Thus, after the dramatic story of the undermined and then restored independence of anti-corruption bodies, Ukraine found itself several steps further away from meeting EU requirements.

Prosecutorial independence remains under threat, both procedurally (the role of the Prosecutor General has been strengthened) and institutionally (prosecutors can be ‘expelled’ from the system at any time or simply pressured through inspections). 

And competitions have been cancelled without any real justification. For now, they are ‘temporary’, but nothing is more permanent than temporary changes, which are often recognised as effective and become permanent.

Soon, we will see the annual EU Enlargement Report, which will not ignore these changes. Even earlier, we will see their assessment in the shadow reports under Chapter 23.

And these details are not secondary for the EU, even though they have been overlooked by the public amid the attack on anti-corruption bodies. So, European integration documents are literally permeated with words about the ‘meritocratic principles’ of appointing prosecutors (i.e., the mandatory nature of competitions, which should be extended further, ideally to the Prosecutor General), procedural independence and strong prosecutorial self-government. Instead, competitions have been cancelled, all prosecutors are under threat of ‘personnel purges’, and prosecutorial self-government has once again lost its powers… 

This is only the European integration aspect.

It is obvious that, in terms of political risks, the concentration of procedural powers in the hands of the Prosecutor General (who, as already mentioned, is politically dependent due to the procedure for his appointment and dismissal) his ability to dismiss ‘dissident’ prosecutors and replace them with ‘loyal’ ones, regardless of the latter’s qualifications and almost regardless of their experience, will have long-term negative consequences for the quality of justice in Ukraine.

This is not only about the threat of selective, politically motivated persecution, but also about a reduction in fairness in society as a whole.

Public trust in Parliament in Ukraine is consistently low. This is not a new trend or an ‘achievement’ of the ninth convocation — the low level of trust in the Verkhovna Rada has persisted for years and, according to research by the Razumkov Centre, is now the lowest among state institutions.

There are many reasons for this, not least the conflation of the individual MPs’ reputations with that of the institution. This is hardly surprising, as even this year there has been no shortage of scandals involving MPs. One need only recall recent weeks, when the Verkhovna Rada once again demonstrated its lack of agency, while certain MPs outraged society with their unrestrained delight after voting for draft law No. 12414. 

On 31 July, Parliament attempted to roll back its decision and voted for the President’s Draft Law No. 13533. For the first time since the start of the full-scale invasion, it even broadcast a sitting online. Yet in the very first minutes of the broadcast, we saw MPs fighting. Then came Serhii Vlasenko’s middle finger, in response to a speech by a fellow MP. Mariana Bezuhla and MPs from the Holos faction walked around with cardboard signs — an action that may be regarded as the use of posters and slogans, prohibited under the current Rules of Procedure of the Verkhovna Rada (Article 53). The first live broadcast of a sitting in three years revealed utter chaos in the conduct of business and MPs’ lack of respect for procedure and for each other. But what can be done about this?

Are there mechanisms to hold to account individual MPs whose behaviour discredits Ukraine’s sole legislative body?

At present, the Verkhovna Rada is unable to distance itself from the unethical — and at times harmful — behaviour of MPs. The absence of parliamentary culture as such, even as evidenced by the most recent broadcast of a sitting, creates numerous situations in which MPs appear in the public space, including on social media, as violators of ethical norms. This negatively affects not only their personal image but also that of their party or faction, and of Parliament as a whole.

One instrument actively used in the parliaments of 85 countries worldwide is a code of conduct for parliamentarians, or a code of parliamentary ethics. This is a normative act that establishes rules of behaviour for MPs in the chamber, and — crucially — beyond it. The list of possible violations in codes across different countries may vary, but the most common include: inappropriate behaviour, personal insults or defamation, prolonged absence from work, and other actions incompatible with the notion of parliamentary dignity. In addition, it is important to have a dedicated internal parliamentary body responsible for ensuring compliance with ethical standards.

The application of ethical norms to members of parliament outside the chamber is not a unique practice. For example, the Code of Ethics of the Saeima of Latvia requires MPs to abide by the principles, rules and recommendations set out in the code in their approach to work, in relations with other MPs, with other institutions, and with society. The  Code of Conduct for Members of the Althingi — the Parliament of Iceland — stipulates that its provisions apply to their duties in public service as elected representatives of the people.

In Ukraine, no such code exists; the full spectrum of possible violations is not clearly set out, and the current Rules of Procedure provide only three types of sanctions for breaches of ethics: 

• interruption of a speech;
• deprivation of the right to speak until the end of the plenary sitting;
• deprivation of the right to participate in plenary sittings.

These apply only to violations of rules of behaviour in the session hall, solely during a plenary sitting, and only in cases of insulting another MP or a parliamentary faction or group. Yet even when the existing mechanisms are used, the outcome may be no result at all. For example, the relevant committee recommended that the Verkhovna Rada adopt a decision depriving Petro Poroshenko of the right to participate in one plenary sitting because of his use of obscene language towards another MP (leaving aside the atmosphere of political pressure in the context of sanctions imposed against him). However, because of a lack of political will, this matter has not even been put to a vote since January. 

The recommendation to adopt a code of ethics was set out in the European Parliament’s Needs Assessment Mission in the 2016 Parliamentary Reform Roadmap — a document soon to mark its tenth anniversary. In the years since, the Verkhovna Rada has failed not only to adopt a code of ethics but even to consider any initiatives in this area at first reading. Notably, at the end of 2022, draft law No. 8327 was registered, aimed at updating the existing norms of parliamentary ethics and establishing an effective system for their implementation. This legislative initiative is important for strengthening public trust in Parliament and consolidating democratic governance. Yet it remains under consideration in the Committee on Rules of Procedure.

Draft law No. 8327 proposes a mechanism of self-regulation. It provides for the establishment in the Verkhovna Rada of a separate committee, to be formed on a parity basis (that is, with an equal number of MPs from the coalition and the opposition), which would oversee compliance with discipline and parliamentary ethics. The committee would examine complaints against MPs who violated parliamentary ethics in the course of exercising their powers (including in the public sphere outside the Parliament building) and decide on their responsibility.

The Main Scientific and Expert Department made several pertinent comments on this draft law, which can be addressed before second reading, and the draft law can be further revised in line with the recommendations of the Rules of Procedure Committee, while also taking into account international practice and standards.

Draft Law No. 8327 is an opportunity to address the problem of unethical behaviour by individual MPs, which could improve the reputation of the institution and increase trust in the Verkhovna Rada. Yet Parliament continues to delay consideration of this draft law.

It is important to recall that a new committee is unlikely to be established during this convocation: given the specifics of forming its membership, this responsibility would fall to the next, tenth, convocation. If the law is not adopted now, the next convocation will also be left without a specialised committee, since the size and remit of committees are determined at the beginning of each new convocation.

It is logical that individuals who make, and will in the future make, the most important decisions in the state should be subject to ethical requirements. Yet Draft Law No. 8327 has been ‘lying’ in the Rules of Procedure Committee for a third year already, and without its conclusion, it cannot be considered at first reading. Ignoring this draft law is a deliberate position of the committee since any other decision would place the issue of ethical conduct back onto the agenda — something clearly not a priority for MPs.

Scuffles in the Verkhovna Rada, threats against activists, abuses of status, and, at the very least, some highly insensitive posts by MPs on social media only intensify public dissatisfaction with the authorities. What outrages people is not so much MPs’ breaches of ethical norms, but the absence of any response from their colleagues. The fact that parliamentarians do not even attempt to condemn unethical behaviour, and that some MPs are capable only of hypocritical statements, is yet further evidence of the loss of agency of Parliament as an institution.

In the present circumstances, the Verkhovna Rada urgently needs to find instruments capable of restoring people’s trust. During wartime, the problems with Parliament’s agency are becoming ever more visible and threatening — threatening to the democratic state order of Ukraine. As an institution, the Verkhovna Rada is obliged to ensure citizens’ trust to avoid these threats. While a code of ethics for MPs is no panacea for all the problems in Parliament, without it, in the view of the Agency for Legislative Initiatives, restoring trust will be impossible.

The adoption of the controversial Law No. 4555 concerning the NABU and the SAPO became a turning point, when, for the first time since the start of the full-scale war, society so openly and decisively opposed the actions of the authorities. The speed of the draft law’s passage — from the moment the comparative table was provided to its signing and publication — was staggering: everything took place within a single day.

Excuses for Members of Parliament to breach the Rules of Procedure abound: from ‘the requirements of wartime’ to ‘threats to national security’. Moreover, this is not aligned with the Constitution of Ukraine, which automatically makes it problematic.

Already in the first months of the full-scale invasion, it became evident that the Rules of Procedure were not suited for application under martial law — the relevant procedures for such circumstances were simply not prescribed. At the same time, for over three years, Parliament has failed to amend them to ensure the legitimacy of procedural decisions — instead, it resorted to half-measures in the form of resolutions that only slightly simplified organisational procedures.

Using Law No. 4555 as an example, the Agency for Legislative Initiatives recalls the most common violations of the Rules of Procedure.

As an exception, the lead committee may decide to consider proposals and amendments introduced into the provisions of a draft law that were not the subject of consideration at first reading. This is possible if the lead committee and/or the expert unit of the Secretariat of the Verkhovna Rada indicated the necessity of their inclusion in their conclusions, and the chair announced this at the plenary session during the consideration of the draft law at first reading.

In other words, between the first and second reading, the text of a draft law must not change so radically (through the appearance of entirely new provisions that were neither discussed nor elaborated at the stage of first reading) that it would in fact need to be reconsidered afresh. The Rules of Procedure contain a direct prohibition on such procedural acrobatics.

There was no mention of the need to introduce proposals unrelated to the subject of Law No. 4555 either in the conclusion of the lead committee at first reading or in the conclusion of the Main Scientific and Expert Department. This is reflected in the draft law’s profile. The inclusion of proposals limiting the independence of the NABU and SAPO even forced one of the initiators to abstain from voting for his own legislative initiative.

Nothing fundamentally new occurred. The long-standing practice of ‘nested doll laws’, which became particularly popular in the first months of martial law, has evidently once again been applied. This was how the Research Service of the Verkhovna Rada was established and how the regulatory impact analysis was dispensed with. This scheme makes it possible to avoid registering a new draft law that would otherwise have to comply with the requirements of the Rules of Procedure, include justification, and undergo mandatory reviews in the structural units of the Secretariat of the Verkhovna Rada and in committees. Such proposals would hardly have secured the support of the parliamentary committees on Anti-Corruption Policy or European Integration, whose review is mandatory for all registered draft laws.

MPs are supposed to receive the draft law prepared for second or repeated reading, together with the lead committee’s conclusion and other supporting documents, at least ten days before the date of its consideration at a plenary sitting of the Verkhovna Rada.

The Rules of Procedure prescribe precisely such a period to ensure that MPs have at least the opportunity to familiarise themselves with what they will have to vote for or against.

In the case of Law No. 4555, however, the committee meeting took place on the same day, 22 July, just a few hours before the start of the plenary sitting, while MPs received what was in effect a new text only a few minutes before the sitting began. They simply had no physical time to familiarise themselves with the committee’s version of the draft law. This does not, however, absolve MPs of responsibility, since voting for an unknown text is still a choice — and one that they make at almost every plenary sitting. For instance, with regard to 45 (60%) of the draft laws adopted at second reading during the 12th session of the Verkhovna Rada, the deadlines for familiarisation with the committee conclusions and the comparative table before consideration in the plenary hall were violated. Overall, since the start of the full-scale invasion, in each session, more than half of the draft laws have been adopted in breach of MPs’ lawful right to familiarise themselves with the texts.

In Parliament, this practice has long been perceived as a standard ‘working process’. It emerged and became entrenched well before the start of the ninth convocation of Parliament. The situation in which most MPs do not, in fact, know what they are voting for is more the rule than the exception. Given the existing practice of registering, processing and considering hundreds of legislative initiatives during a session, such a situation is hardly surprising. Yet when a whole series of procedural norms are ignored, failure to observe the time limits for familiarisation can play a decisive role in the adoption of initiatives such as Law No. 4555 or the so-called ‘dictatorial laws’ of 16 January 2014.

The Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada signs a law within two to five days of its submission (after preparation in the lead committee and the legal unit), except in cases provided for by the Rules of Procedure. This period is justified by the fact that MPs have two days in which to challenge the results of a vote if it was conducted in violation of the rules. In the case of Law No. 4555, immediately after the vote, at the proposal of MP Maksym Buzhanskyi, the Verkhovna Rada instructed the Speaker to sign the draft law without delay and send it to the President for signature. While carrying out instructions of Parliament is one of the Speaker’s powers, the procedure of immediate signing is not provided for by the Rules of Procedure. Nevertheless, this has become a fairly common practice during martial law, often justified by the need to accelerate certain stages of the legislative process.

The regular breach of the Rules of Procedure by MPs has already become part of parliamentary culture (and MPs of the ninth convocation — also known as the ‘new faces’ — very quickly adapted to this process).

If anyone wishes to challenge a law on the grounds of violations of the procedure for its adoption, the Constitutional Court consistently adheres to its own legal position. It holds that a normative act may be declared unconstitutional only if the procedural requirements established directly by the Constitution of Ukraine, and not by other legal acts (the Rules of Procedure of the Verkhovna Rada), have been violated.

Previously, for these reasons, laws were declared unconstitutional only in cases where MPs had not voted in person or if a law had not received a committee conclusion. The first reason is no longer relevant due to the introduction of the touch-sensitive voting button in March 2021, and as to the second — in the case of Law No. 4555, a committee meeting, albeit only formally, did take place. Breaches of the Rules of Procedure have not yet constituted grounds for declaring a law unconstitutional. It is unlikely that anyone in their right mind would wish to open this ‘Pandora’s box’ by declaring an act unconstitutional on the basis of violations of the Rules of Procedure, given the number of acts adopted in this way.

Only under pressure from engaged public and international partners did the President register, and the Verkhovna Rada adopt in full, a new draft law that effectively restored the procedural independence of the NABU and SAPO, rescinded by Law No. 4555. In other words, it was only public oversight of Parliament and other institutions that compelled the authorities to correct what had been done. Yet this, unfortunately, was also achieved in breach of the Rules of Procedure. However, in this case, the public importance of adopting the President’s draft law as swiftly as possible was indisputable.

Clearly, persuading MPs of the need to comply with the Rules of Procedure — or comprehensively reviewing it so as to bring it into line with the Constitution (!) and ensure the basic principles of transparency and public participation in the legislative process — is a task marked with several stars. The Agency for Legislative Initiatives is convinced, however, that there are several critically important steps that can be taken here and now to at least minimise the risk of a repeat of the lightning-fast adoption of Law No. 4555.

First and foremost, the problem of the closed nature of the decision-making process must be addressed. This is manifested in several ways — most notably the absence of live broadcasting of plenary sittings of the Verkhovna Rada.

Nor can the absence of broadcasting be justified by the content of the issues discussed at a plenary sitting — the Verkhovna Rada itself uploads recordings to its YouTube channel, and transcripts are published on the official website. The ban on live broadcasting means that the public learns of the most important decisions only after the fact. More than 90 civil society organisations and media outlets have called for the restoration of online broadcasting of plenary sittings. A group of MPs registered the relevant resolution, yet neither it nor any other similar proposal received the support of the Verkhovna Rada.

Another manifestation of closedness is the fact that for six months, the President has not signed Draft Law No. 11321. This legislative initiative obliges open sittings of committees to be broadcast and the recordings permanently posted on their webpages, as well as requiring the agenda of sittings and the draft acts scheduled for consideration to be published no later than 24 hours before the start of a committee sitting. Even some members of the committee were unaware of the sitting at which Law No. 4555 was prepared for second reading — let alone journalists having open access.

The sabotage of parliamentary transparency has also affected the Law of Ukraine ‘On Public Consultations’. As a result of proposals by MPs, this law: 

• will enter into force only one year after the lifting or termination of martial law, instead of six months as envisaged in the draft law at first reading;
• has established an exception allowing MPs and parliamentary committees not to conduct public consultations at all.

All this creates the impression that MPs are doing everything possible to avoid dealing with policy and instead concern themselves solely with politics. Ultimately, unsubstantiated and hasty political decisions lead to mistakes, with the authorities once again stepping on the same rake they themselves had laid in their path.

The habitual condescending attitude of MPs towards violations of the Rules of Procedure — which manifests itself at critical moments (as in the case of Law No. 4555) — threatens the democratic foundations of parliamentarism and sends a signal to this and future convocations of the Verkhovna Rada that the Rules of Procedure can be violated — and that such violations will go unpunished.

The Committee on Law Enforcement of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has received proposals for a substantial expansion of the content of Draft Law No. 12414, dated 16 January 2025. The primary objective of the proposed law is to establish special conditions for conducting pre-trial investigations that would allow for a prompt and effective response to reports of missing persons and ensure that applicants (victims) — close relatives and family members of the missing person — have access to legal mechanisms during wartime. The draft law merely seeks to simplify the procedure for determining the venue of pre-trial investigation to enhance the effectiveness of organising such investigations under martial law.

The proposals to amend the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine submitted to the Committee include:

1. A significant strengthening of the role of the Prosecutor General (primarily through amendments to paragraph 2 of Article 36 of the CPC of Ukraine) — the Prosecutor General would be granted the authority to request any criminal proceeding for the purpose of verifying compliance with the law, including the ability to transfer such proceedings to other prosecutors for review. This step threatens the procedural independence of prosecutors who exercise procedural control in these cases, blocks further investigation, and enables manual control over all high-profile proceedings. In practice, this would implement the doctrinal notion that ‘the Prosecutor General is superior to any prosecutor’, which contradicts the will of the legislator, who for the past ten years has consistently granted the Head of the SAPO a high level of procedural independence and the SAPO itself — as a specialised prosecution office — institutional autonomy.
2. Abolition of the so-called ‘exclusive investigative jurisdiction’ in criminal proceedings under the jurisdiction of NABU and SAPO. Currently, a prosecutor of the relevant level has the right to transfer a case from one pre-trial investigation body to another in cases of investigative ineffectiveness (paragraph 5, Article 36 of the CPC of Ukraine). However, an exception exists for NABU — such proceedings cannot be reassigned to, for example, the National Police of Ukraine or the State Bureau of Investigation. This is one of the key guarantees of the agency’s independence. The proposed amendments would eliminate this safeguard entirely — the Prosecutor General would be authorised to reassign any proceedings in any direction. Moreover, the Prosecutor General would gain the power to issue binding written instructions in NABU-led criminal proceedings. Such instructions could either harm the overall logic of criminal prosecution or simply ‘block’ proceedings by issuing meaningless directives that would require considerable time and resources to implement.
3. Elimination of most provisions granting SAPO procedural independence in high-level corruption cases to ensure impartial and effective investigations. For example, the proposed amendments would revoke any exclusive procedural powers, such as approving notices of suspicion for special subjects, resolving disputes over investigative jurisdiction, and making changes to appellate and cassation appeals. In addition, the powers of the Deputy Prosecutor General — Head of SAPO could be delegated to other prosecutors (as proposed in the amendment to Article 37 of the CPC of Ukraine). In effect, the role of the Head of SAPO would become ‘transitional’ and would be determined within the general framework of duty allocation among the Deputy Prosecutors General.
4. ⁠The closure of criminal proceedings against a suspect (for example, following an announced audit of proceedings) may become a matter of ‘negotiation’ in relation to other individuals involved. Currently, a prosecutor’s decision to close a criminal proceeding against a suspect does not preclude the continuation of the pre-trial investigation into the respective criminal offence (Part 5 of Article 284 of the CPC of Ukraine). The proposed amendments would allow a suspect who is a special subject — such as an official in Category ‘A’, an MP, a judge, or the head of a major enterprise with a significant share of state or municipal ownership — to file a motion for the closure of proceedings in relation to themselves. However, such a motion would go directly to the Prosecutor General. In practice, this would mean the suspect would simply need to ‘come to an agreement’ with the Prosecutor General, as it is the latter who would now decide the fate of top-level corruption cases — and all others — from initiation to completion.
5. Extension of all additional instruments provided for in Article 615 of the CPC of Ukraine (special procedures for investigation under martial law) for a period of three years after the termination or repeal of martial law. In light of the evolving practice of pre-trial investigation, there is a possibility that currently ‘dormant’ provisions allowing prosecutors to conduct searches or extend preventive measures without applying to an investigating judge, who, in certain territories, is objectively unable to exercise their powers, may be applied in practice.

The draft also proposes amendments to the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Public Prosecutor’s Office’ to simplify the procedure for transferring prosecutors from lower-level prosecutors’ offices to the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) without a competitive selection process during the period of martial law. It would also allow for the appointment of individuals from outside the prosecution system. In addition, it proposes resolving the issue of prosecutors placed ‘out of staff’ due to decisions by the leadership concerning liquidation, reorganisation, restructuring, or changes in staffing levels within the prosecution service.

The likely aim of these provisions is to enable the transfer of prosecutors from district and regional offices, as significant resources are needed to conduct audits of NABU proceedings. However, this approach runs counter to the merit-based principles of appointment and transfer within the prosecution service and continues the flawed policy of addressing staffing issues outside the framework developed by the previous PGO leadership along the European integration track.

General Conclusion. The expansion of the Prosecutor General’s powers through the repeal of most provisions ensuring the procedural independence and autonomy of NABU and SAPO is inconsistent with the state’s anti-corruption policy pursued since the Revolution of Dignity. The prohibition against transferring NABU and SAPO proceedings to other investigative bodies, along with the special procedure for approving procedural decisions by the Head of SAPO, was introduced to minimise pressure on high-level corruption cases involving senior public officials, ministers, presidents, judges, and others. The effectiveness of this approach has been repeatedly emphasised by Ukraine’s international partners, particularly within the framework of European integration and the anti-corruption component of Chapter 23 of EU acquis.

Unlike prosecutors of the Prosecutor General’s Office, SAPO prosecutors underwent rigorous selection procedures involving international partners, and the Head of SAPO was appointed through an open competition. Public scandals in recent years, linked to the ‘blocking’ of proceedings by investigative bodies and the PGO, have demonstrated the intent to exercise ‘manual control’ over criminal cases, which undermines the principle of accountability in high-level corruption investigations. Recent efforts to discredit NABU and SAPO in the media space only reinforce this concern.

Law remains one of the most popular study programmes among applicants. The trend towards massive enrolment of law students (even despite the war, which has caused a noticeable outflow of students) continued in 2024. Specifically, during the 2024 admission campaign, applicants submitted more than 40,000 applications for the “Law” specialty. But does such a huge popularity of legal education necessarily correlate with its quality? 

The task of the university is not only to provide law students with formal education in the form of a thorough knowledge of legal texts. Often, people form the impression, based on American cinema, that lawyers memorize and can quote any article of the law or regulation. However, firstly, such “inflated” standards do not always correspond to reality (and this is normal, because a lawyer is not a robot programmed to memorise legal texts). Secondly, it is important not only to know the law, but also to understand it correctly to apply it properly in practice. While this “understanding” is sometimes not so easy. One of the reasons for this is that understanding the essence of law is based on the worldview of a lawyer, which is shaped over time by various factors. Studying at a higher education institution is only one component of this process. Therefore, the key role of legal education is to lay the “right” foundation for such an understanding, based on democratic values.

There are three key types of legal understandingThat is, understanding the essence of law in legal theory:

1. The natural law type, characterised by the principle of the rule of law and the recognition of the values of human rights, equality, freedom, and justice. 
2. The positivist type, which is based on the notion that any legal activity (although not only by lawyers) must strictly adhere to the requirements of the law.
3. The sociological type, according to which finding the right solution requires consideration of society’s needs in each specific case.

Ideally, students should be focused on ensuring that any decision they make embodies the idea of justice. If the situation requires, they should have the courage to deviate from the provisions of an unjust law (for example, as the judge did in a 2017 case when, as a punishment for the illegal sale of a pack of cigarettes, the court sentenced an elderly woman to a fine 100 times (!) a fine 100 times (!) smallerInstead of UAH 17,000, she received only UAH 170. The judge’s decision was based on the fact that the woman received a local pension of UAH 1,500, so she would have had to save up for years to pay the full amount of the fine. than stipulated by law). But do universities truly succeed in fulfilling their role of training specialists with such an understanding of the essence of legal phenomena?

To assess whether modern legal education really prepares future lawyers to face the challenges awaiting them in legal practice, ALI conducted a study on the role of universities in shaping students’ legal understanding. The results demonstrated that students do not always manage to make a fair decision, that go beyond “blind” adherence to the “letter” of the law. However, this does not mean that students reject the value of the rule of law. In fact, students have a fairly good understanding of how human rights should be ensured and protected (i.e., the ideas of natural law). However, unfortunately, the thoroughness of this knowledge is only manifested at the level of reproducing theoretical material. In practice, law students tend to act quite differently. The study led to an interesting conclusion that, when students reject the idea of the rule of law in real life, they do not necessarily take the side of strict compliance with the law, i.e. positivism, as might be expected. Instead, their decisions are primarily influenced by the specific circumstances of the case. This indicates that students prioritize the sociological concept in their approach to legal application.

Thus, the study highlighted the “gap” between students’ theoretical knowledge and their practical legal skills. This “gap” cannot be bridged during four years of undergraduate study. On the contrary, over time, the number of students who, despite their formal commitment to the unconditional protection of human rights at the level of theoretical knowledge, actually lean towards strict adherence to legal norms increases. This trend indicates that higher education institutions are “not doing enough” in terms of preparing students for the challenges they will face in the future legal practice. This refers to cases when, in difficult situations, a lawyer must critically assess the provisions of legal acts for their compliance with the rule of law and sometimes deviate from such norms in the pursuit of justice. As a result, the “overly theoretical” focus of legal education creates risks that, for some lawyers, upholding the principles of rule of law, values of equality and justice will become only a formal requirement, one that is not consistently applied when resolving practical situations.

In reality, four-year students who will graduate from universities in just a few months and start their practical work as lawyers, still have not learned how to apply their acquired knowledge in practice. This is hardly the level of preparation these students expected to receive when they enrolled in law school four years ago. Therefore, it turns out that the stated expectations regarding the quality of legal education have not been met. Thus, all this hype around legal education does not necessarily indicate the high quality of legal training (although, of course, the level of quality of the educational process varies depending on the university). 

To identify and address the shortcomings of the educational process, it is worth listening to the students themselves. As part of a survey conducted during the study, students generally rated the quality of legal education in Ukraine as “average”. 

Among the key “problematic” aspects of the educational process that require optimisation, students highlighted the following:

• In the educational process, the primary focus is on the studying theoretical concepts, so there is a demand for developing the skills to apply the acquired knowledge in practice.
• Lack of innovative approaches and formalism in teaching.
• The inclusion of mandatory disciplines in the curriculum that do not meet the interests of students.
• Lack of real opportunity to choose elective subjects.
• Difficulties caused by the remote learning format.

Of course, these issues affect different educational institutions to varying degrees – some face a greater combination of these problems, why other experience fewer. However, the question of how to improve the quality of legal education remains relevant for the entire system of higher education in Ukraine. 

To correct the identified shortcomings, students offer their perspective on solving the outlined problems. In their opinion, the way to improve the quality of the educational process should be based on the following steps:

1. Increase the number of lecture sessions across all years of study, starting from the first year, involving practicing lawyers.
2. Increase the number of lecturers with practical experience in the field of law.
3. Introduce specific training sessions in courts and law firms for students starting from the first year of study.

The idea that more emphasis should be placed on the practical aspect of teaching legal disciplines is also widely supported by government agencies, international institutions and the public sector. Therefore, to improve the quality of legal education and, consequently, the training of legal professionals, universities should start working on reorienting their approaches to teaching law in a more practical direction.