The monthly newsletter of the Centre of Policy and Legal Reform is devoted to the analysis of the state reform, in particular in the areas of parliamentarism and elections, constitutional and judicial reform, civil service, anti-corruption, etc. The purpose of the publication is to raise the awareness among citizens and to strengthen their ability to influence the state authorities in order to accelerate democratic reforms and establish proper governance in Ukraine. If you want to receive the monthly newsletter by mail, please send an e-mail to busol@pravo.org.ua (Yaryna Busol, communications manager of the CPLR).

1. The newsletter was created with the support of the European Union.
The content of the publication is not a reflection of the official position of the European Union.
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CONSTITUTiON
• Happy Constitution Day, friends!
EFFECTIVE GOVERNMENT
• How the Constitution will help reform
public administration
FRIENDLY ADMINISTRATION
• Decentralization of services provided
through Civil Registration Centers (CRC)
keeps moving slowly
FAIR TRIAL
• Additional changes to the legislation
are needed to launch the Anticorruption
Court
• Judges faced a new problem in social
networks
• The CPLR presented the results
of the monitoring of judicial
proceedings at the international
conference
www.pravo.org.ua
www.pravo.org.ua
NEWSLETTER № 9/2018(June, 2018)
The monthly information bulletin of the Center of Policy and Legal Reform (CPLR) is dedicated to the analysis of state
reforms, in particular in the areas of parliamentarianism and elections, constitutional and judicial reforms, civil service,
anticorruption, etc. The goal of the publication is to increase the level of expert awareness among the citizens and to
strengthen their capacity to influence the government authorities in order to expedite democratic reforms and to establish
good governance in Ukraine.
1. Training “Judicial reform: points of contact
and tools of public influence”
(July 24, Kharkiv).
ANNOUNCEMENTS
HONEST LAW ENFORCEMENT
AUTHORITIES
• The Law on National Security
of Ukraine was adopted
• The draft Law on criminal offenses
was approved in the first reading
ANTIcorruption
• The final text of the Law
“On the Supreme Anticorruption Court”
was fudged as regards the appeals
review of corruption cases
• The Ombudsman sent a petition
for the cancellation of the declaration
for the NGO

2. www.pravo.org.ua
NEWSLETTER No 9/2018(June, 2018)
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CONSTITUTiON
Happy Constitution Day, friends!
Let’s move forward together through awareness of
constitutional values to the real protection of the rights of
every person in Ukraine.
In order to improve the parliamentary-presidential
form of government, the following steps should be taken:
• changing of the procedure for the formation of
the Government (unification of the procedure for the
appointment of ministers, introduction of a constructive
no confidence vote to the Government);
• excluding the institution of the parliamentary
majority as a subject of constitutional regulation;
• cancellation of an imperative mandate;
• establishing a more realistic procedure for the
impeachment of the President;
• changing the right of legislative initiative (granting
the right to determine urgent government draft laws,
depriving the people’s deputy of the right to initiate draft
laws individually and introducing collective initiation);
• changing the procedure for adopting laws
depending on the type of law (the majority of the people’s
deputies should adopt ordinary laws and simple majority
of the constitutional composition should be required to
adopt constitutional laws and codes);
• introducing an interpellation institution.
Since 2014, the issue of holding constitutional reform
in relation to the “power triangle” (Parliament, President,
Government) has been removed from the political agenda,
while the reform should address the issue of the dual
nature of the executive power in Ukraine and make the
government form more effective.
Unfortunately, this issue is raised only in the light
of certain political media reasons or on the occasion of
the upcoming Constitution Day. However, such a large
scale problem should be resolved not in connection with
political caprice, but in order to increase the efficiency of
public governance in the interests of the whole society.

3. www.pravo.org.ua
NEWSLETTER No 9/2018(June, 2018)
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EFFECTIVE GOVERNMENT
How the Constitution will help
reform public administration
Each year, on the eve of the Constitution Day, every­
one is turning back to discussion of the necessity and
expediency of amending the Basic Law. Changes to the
Constitution would contribute to solving problems in
public administration which were considered in previous
issues of the Bulletin. Moreover, even in professional
circles, the deceptive and dangerous point of view of the
fact that the institutional organization of the government
has little influence on the development of the state began
to appear more and more often.
According to the CPLR experts, the Constitution should
consolidate the provisions by which the Government
will ensure the implementation of policies through the
adoption of acts and coordination of the work of ministers,
who should be responsible for the activities of services,
agencies, inspections within the subordination system of
their ministries. This will contribute to solving the problem
of insufficient independence of the Government in the
development and implementation of state policy in the
system of distribution of powers of government.
The constitutional regulation of cooperation between
the President and the Government is also imperfect. And
the quality of state management depends on this to a
great extent. Distribution of powers between the head
of state and the Government should exclude both the
possibility of mutual blocking of each other’s work, and
the possibility of implementing by each of them of “their
own” policies. State policy needs to be unified, and for its
development, a consensus between the President and the
Government is needed.
The use of an indefinite term “other central executive
authorities” points to the lack of constitutional regulation.
This led to unjustified fragmentation of the state policy
sectors and the illogical structure of the executive branch.
Their uncertainty potentially carries the risk of abuse of
power.
It is appropriate to introduce at the constitutional
level the concept of “public administration”, which will
include ministries that should cover all areas of public
policy; services, agencies, inspections, their territorial
offices; executive authorities explicitly envisioned by
the Constitution; local state administrations (LSA) and
executive bodies of local councils.
The constitutional division of powers between the
President and the Government regarding the influence
on the LSA does not contribute to the establishment of
a consolidated system of executive bodies. The heads of
the LSA are appointed and dismissed by the President
upon the submission of the Government. However, in
practice, the Government’s role in appointment is nominal.
This makes the LSA dependent on the President and de
facto independent of the Government. The Government
does not have sufficient means of influence on the LSA.
Changes to the Constitution could solve this problem.
In view of the difficulties in reforming public admi­
nistration, it is appropriate to directly incorporate in the
Constitution the principle of separation of political and
administrative functions as one of the principles of the
organization of executive power.

4. www.pravo.org.ua
NEWSLETTER No 9/2018(June, 2018)
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FRIENDLY
ADMINISTRATION
Decentralization of services
provided through Civil Registration
Centers (CRC) keeps moving slowly
On June 11, the announcement was published on the
web-site of the Ministry of Justice: Minister Petrenko has
opened a Civil Registration Center (CRC), “OpenSpace”, in
Lviv. At the official opening ceremony the Minister stated
that last year such a center was set up in Kyiv and last
month the city of Odessa has joined the project. Minister
Petrenko added that this project will keep expanding,
so new “OpenSpace” centers will soon open in Vinnitsa,
Uzhgorod, Sumy and Kherson. In total, 12 types of services
are rendered in such offices.
Such a policy of the Ministry of Justice regarding the
opening of individual “offices” raises many questions.
Firstly, it contradicts the general policy of the
Government of Ukraine, which has chosen to delegate
the powers of the central government on rendering admi­­
nistra­tive services to local self-government authorities. It
should be noted that the Action Plan for the implemen­
tation of Public Administration Reform Strategy for
2016-2020 incorporates the task on the support in the
Verkhovna Rada of a draft law on the transfer to local
self-government of the authority to render administrative
services in relation to CRCs. This law was to be adopted
back in the 4th quarter of 2017.
Secondly, this policy brings us back to the past, when
a citizen was forced to visit several different authorities
on different opening days in order to receive an individual
service in each of them in connection with one event in
his/her life. In this situation a person actually presents the
same information and serves as the “courier” between
these authorities.
The Minister should be reminded, that back in February
2017, the government draft law (No 6150) envisaging the
decentralization of services on the registration of civil acts
was registered in the Parliament. But then it “got lost” in
parliamentary committees and still did not reach the first
reading. As a result, citizens in cities and towns (district
centers) keep visiting CRC departments of the Ministry of
Justice. They can not get these services in combination
with many others, since without decentralization of the
authority to provide services on the registration of civil
acts, nobody is in a hurry to incorporate them at the CRAS
where these services could be provided on the basis of a
model of life situations (for example, a package of various
services for the birth of a child, registration of marriage,
etc.).
“The policy of the Ministry of Justice is simply
outrageous. Instead of facilitating the
integration of civil registration services into the
CRAS, where people can order them along
with a passport, state aid and other services,
the Minister of Justice creates separate
offices. Why should people visit many
institutions, if it is possible to resolve all issues
by a single visit to the CRAS?”, said Yevhen
Shkolnyi, the CPLR expert.
The expert adds: “If, for example, a child is born, then
parents need not only to register this fact, but also to
register his/her place of residence and to apply for the
state aid. It is impossible to do this in the “OpenSpace” of
the Ministry of Justice. In addition, this is an extra spending
of the state budget. Therefore, it is necessary to adopt
the draft law No.6150 as soon as possible and to stop this
practice of “separate offices”.

5. www.pravo.org.ua
NEWSLETTER No 9/2018(June, 2018)
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FAIR TRIAL
Additional changes
to the legislation are needed to
launch the Anticorruption Court
On June 7, the Parliament passed the Law “On the
Supreme Anticorruption Court”. On June 11, the President
signed it and the Law came into force. On June 21, the
Law “On the Establishment of the Supreme Anticorruption
Court” was adopted. In such a way, a sufficient legal basis
for the beginning of the selection of judges of this court
was created.
Earlier, the CPLR reported a high probability of a
manipulative selection of judges of the Anticorruption
court if the High Qualifications Commission of Judges
is going to determine the winners of the competition
in a non-transparent manner. Risks remain: although
international experts will be involved in the selection
process, they will have an impact only on the withdrawal
of individual candidates, but not on the formation of the
list of winners.
In order to introduce an effective Anticorruption court,
additional legislative changes are needed. In particular,
the threat to independent review of cases of top-level
corruption is that the cassation instance is the Supreme
Court, whose executive staff was selected in a non-
transparent and manipulative way.
Roman Kuybida, the CPLR expert believes:
“Ideally, it would be worthwhile to involve inter­
national experts also to the formation of the rating
of the competition winners. Amendments to the Law
“On the Judicial System and Status of Judges” would
be appropriate to create a separate autonomous anti-
corruption chamber in the Supreme Court, whose judges
should be selected according to the same procedures as
anti-corruption judges. It is also necessary to eliminate the
provisions that allow top-level corruption cases to avoid
the Anticorruption court even in the appeals instance”.
Judges faced a new problem
in social networks
On June 15, on the Facebook page of the judge
V. Svitlytska, a publication was posted about threats to
her life in connection with the case consideration, which
led to the adoption of the “necessary decision”. Later, the
Shevchenkivsky District Court of Kyiv reported that the
information indicated is not true.
In April, a page was created on which the alleged
judge of a Kyiv court V. Pysanets objected to the fact that
he made a decision in a resonant case. Later on, the press
service of the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv reported that
the page was fake.
Interestingly, these judges did not address the Highest
Council of Justice with a statement of interference with
their activities.
The CPLR presented the results
of the monitoring of judicial
proceedings at the international
conference
On June 12, the CPLR experts Roman Kuybida and
Maksym Sereda, presented the results of a large-scale
litigation monitoring program that was implemented with
the support of the OSCE Project Coordinator in Ukraine.
The presentation took place within the framework of the
Annual Trial Monitoring Meeting, a regular event hosted by
the Bureau of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights in
various parts of the OSCE region. This year the event took
place in Ukraine for the first time.

6. www.pravo.org.ua
NEWSLETTER No 9/2018(June, 2018)
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HONEST LAW ENFORCEMENT
AUTHORITIES
The Law on National Security
of Ukraine was adopted
On June 21, the Parliament adopted in general the Law
on National Security of Ukraine No. 8068, initiated by the
President of Ukraine.
The law is aimed at bringing the system of national
security of Ukraine in line with the standards of NATO
member states. However, the Law still has significant non-
conformities with the European standards and provisions
of the Constitution, which were not corrected before the
second reading. In particular:
• inclusion of ministries and other executive
authorities (police, migration service, transport service,
etc.) into the security sector is a direct violation of
European standards (PACE Recommendations 1713
(2005) on democratic control of the security sector of the
Member States);
• keeping the law enforcement functions within the
Security Service does not correspond to the counter-
intelligence nature of the activity of this body;
• granting the President unconstitutional powers
regarding the appointment and dismissal of the
senior command of the Armed Forces, as well as the
senior command of other military formations, general
management of intelligence agencies, etc.
The draft Law on criminal offenses
was approved in the first reading
On June 7, the Parliament approved in the first reading
the draft Law “On simplification of pre-trial investigation
of certain categories of criminal offenses” No. 7279-d. The
necessity of passing this Law arises from the provisions of
the Criminal Procedures Code (CPC) of 2012.
The draft law envisages the transformation of crimes
of minor gravity into criminal offenses, which testifies
to the humanization of criminal law. At the same time, it
was not proposed to turn the most serious administrative
offenses with criminal-law content (petty theft, minor theft
of property, petty hooliganism) into criminal offences. In
addition, the proposed amendments to the CPC contain
grave violations of human rights and freedoms, namely:
• right to personal freedom - as a result of the
introduction of new grounds for the detention of
individuals that directly contradict to the Constitution;
• principle of legal certainty – due to the possibility of
interviewing individuals and seizing tools and means prior
to the commencement of a formal investigation;
• right to protection in simplified proceedings, which
currently does not require the participation of a defense
and consent of the victim;
• presumption of innocence, since the main purpose
of the simplified procedure for investigating offences will
be to push the suspect to confess guilt.

7. www.pravo.org.ua
NEWSLETTER No 9/2018(June, 2018)
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ANTIcorruption
The final text of the Law
“On the Supreme Anticorruption
Court” was fudged as regards the
appeals review of corruption cases
On June 7, the Parliament passed the Law “On the
Supreme Anticorruption Court”, and on June 13 it was
published. At the same time, in the published text of the
Law, an amendment appeared, which was not discussed
at the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Legal Policy
and Justice. In addition, it was not included into the
comparative table prepared by the Committee for the
second reading, published on the website of the Verkhovna
Rada. This amendment was not read in the session hall
before the adoption of the law, but appeared strangely in
the official publicized text of the Law.
According to this amendment, “appellate courts (other
than the Appeal Chamber of the Supreme Anticorruption
Court) continue to adjudicate appeals against court
decisions made by courts of first instance and not valid in
criminal proceedings concerning crimes attributed by this
Code to the jurisdiction of the Supreme Anticorruption
Court, the consideration of which was initiated in the
courts of first instance before the day the Supreme
Anticorruption Court began to work”.
And this happens in view of the fact that in accordance
with previous agreements with international partners, the
appeals of cases which are currently pending in general
courts should have been held in the Appeals Chamber of
the Supreme Anticorruption Court.
The Ombudsman sent a petition
for the cancellation of the
declaration for the NGO
On June 13, the Parliamentary Human Rights
Commissioner Lyudmila Denisova sent a petition to
the Constitutional Court regarding the recognition of
unconstitutional provisions of the law on the declaration
by representatives of anti-corruption non-governmental
organizations. Previously, the public called on the subjects
of the right to a constitutional petition to appeal to the
Constitutional Court.
This means that all NABU cases concerning
top corruptors, which consideration has
begun or will begin in general courts of first
instance (before the Supreme Anticorruption
Court started working), will be resolved in the
same way in the general appellate courts,
which have long demonstrated their inability
to make decisions in corruption cases with
respect to top corrupt officials.
The requirement to recognize these provisions
of the law unconstitutional is justified by their
non-compliance with the principle of the rule
of law in terms of legal certainty and is contrary
to the right to freedom of association. In
addition, they discriminate against individuals
on the basis of their activities, are contrary to
the principle of equality and unjustifiably lead
to interference with private life.
In the spring of 2017, when the Law imposing the
obligation to file electronic declarations for anticorruption
activists was adopted, the CPLR expressed its position
regarding its unconstitutionality. However, over the past
year the Parliament has not managed to repeal these
legislative changes. This led to the need to look for new
ways to abolish the provisions of the law, which contradict
the Constitution of Ukraine.

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