“It is necessary to improve the quality of legislation and deal with the system of higher legal education,” Ruslan Stefanchuk
02 March 2021, 14:30
“Judicial reform is one of the most difficult, as the special status of the judiciary creates a number of standards that must be met. Therefore, judicial reform is a long process, but the first steps have already been taken,” said the First Vice Speaker of the Parliament of Ukraine.
According to him, the Commission on Legal Reform was established under the President of Ukraine, which developed the draft Strategy for the Development of Justice and Constitutional Judiciary for 2021-2023.
“The draft Strategy comprehensively presents the analysis of existing problems and diagnostics of what and how to change. In addition, we tried to create the commission on ethics and integrity at the High Council of Justice, reduce the number of judges of the Supreme Court from 200 to 100. However, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine declared unconstitutional the provisions of the Law on Judicial Reform (Reg. No. 1008), registered by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Constitutional Court of Ukraine also declared unconstitutional many provisions of the law on judicial reform of the previous government. This week, we will consider three bills that partially address these issues. We are set to go further,” Ruslan Stefanchuk stressed.
According to the First Deputy, despite the fact that the Constitutional Court of Ukraine is not a body of the judiciary, they still plan to carry out a joint reform of both institutions.
Ruslan Stefanchuk stressed the importance of systematizing and ensuring the quality of legislation.
“We have already developed the Plan of Legislative Work of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for 2021 and a medium-term strategy for the development of legislation. Another important task is to change the system of higher legal education: to understand how it should function so that we have extremely high-quality specialists,” Ruslan Stefanchuk said.