Gianni Buquicchio, President of the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, has slammed a draft bill now awaiting its second reading in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada. During the ‘Democracy in Action’ conference now underway in Kyiv, he said that the bill would destroy judicial reform in Ukraine if passed. Mr Buquicchio also met with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on 8 June, and hopefully spelled this out in greater detail. The Venice Commission’s concerns about Draft Law No. 3711-d are shared by a number of prominent Ukrainian NGOs who have said that adoption of the bill would spell catastrophe for judicial reform.
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Halya Coynash: Judicial reform in Ukraine is ‘doomed’ if current bill gets passed
Oleksandr Tupytsky, chairman of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine (С), leaves the courtroom after hearing a case challenging the constitutionality of Artem Sytnyk as director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine on July 9, 2020. The court, derided as unaccountable and rife with conflicts of interests, has issued a string of rulings that dismantle anti-corruption institutions — including declaring Sytnyk’s appointment unconstitutional. In an interview with the Kyiv Post, former court chairman Stanyslav Shevchuk accused the judges of acting in the interests of the Kremlin and Ukrainian oligarchs to sabotage the nation’s democratic future.
