April 9, 2025 14:59
Committee on Legal Policy Approves Draft Law No. 13114 for Adoption as a Basis
On April 9, at a meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on Legal Policy, MPs unanimously recommended that Parliament adopt Draft Law No. 13114 as a basis, citing its potential to improve the effectiveness of judge selection procedures, particularly in the HACC competition.
The draft law is not yet perfect and will require significant revisions if adopted in the first reading. Therefore, TI Ukraine presented its key recommendations for improving the draft law at this meeting of the Committee.
In our opinion, by the second reading:
- it is necessary to reduce the restriction period for participation in the HACC competition from 10 to 5 years, for former employees of NABU and SAPO. The draft law already proposes such a reduction for former employees of other law enforcement agencies, so it is unjustified to leave an exception only for former employees of NABU and SAPO.
- Parliament should reject the proposal to fully classify information from the dossiers of judges and judicial candidates who are serving in the military. The method proposed by the MPs is disproportionate, as the draft law suggests restricting public access to the entire document, rather than just individual sensitive information.
We have detailed the specific improvements we suggest for draft law No. 13114 here.
The meeting was also attended by a representative of the HQCJ, who stated that the Commission would soon announce the start of a new competition for the positions of judges in the first instance of the HACC.
The competition for the HACC Appeals Chamber, announced in January, was postponed precisely due to the need to adopt the amendments proposed by Draft Law No. 13114. These amendments will also help synchronize selections in both instances of the Anti-Corruption Court. Therefore, we hope for the active participation of Parliament in improving the competitive selection of HACC judges, ensuring that the new selection process takes place as quickly and efficiently as possible.
The meeting was also attended by a representative of the HQCJ, who stated that the Commission would soon announce the start of a new competition for the positions of judges in the first instance of the HACC.
