Despite the provisions of the Law on the HCJ reform, which foreseen that the Council of Judges has to delegate its candidates to the Ethics Council until September 13, in the morning of September 21, the Council of Judges adopted a Regulation on the selection of candidates for the Ethics Council and provided a month for the submission of documents by candidates.
Thus, according to the Regulation, the candidates have the right to submit documents from September 22 to October 21, 2021. All 27 members of the Council of Judges voted for the Regulation and the aforementioned deadlines for submission of documents.
“The law does not require the Council of Judges to adopt any regulations. The Council of Judges was to decide in August how to delegate judges to the Ethics Council. Instead, the members of the Council of Judges pretended that the formation of the Ethics Council did not concern them. Now that all the deadlines have been missed, the Council of Judges will wait for the candidates throughout October and then may fail the vote again. Such actions are nothing more than delay, aimed solely at preventing the HCJ reform and ensuring that it is the unreformed HCJ that will form the new HQCJ. The Head of the Council of Judges, Bohdan Monich, is personally responsible for this delay and possible failure of judicial reform.”
says Stepan Berko, Advocacy Manager of the DEJURE Foundation.
At its meeting on September 13, the Council of Judges did not support any of the four candidates to the Ethics Council.
The refusal of the Council of Judges of Ukraine to delegate Ukrainian judges to the Ethics Council, which is to check the integrity of the members of the High Council of Justice, threatens to break promises of real judicial reform in Ukraine, the US State Department spokesperson Ned Price stated on September 16.