03 February 2012, 15:03
On Thursday, during his interview to the "Chas" ("Time") program on Channel 5, the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Volodymyr Lytvyn noted that the decisions that following the recommendations of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Ukraine should take in the nearest future, are necessary first of all for Ukraine. "It is not the Council of Europe and not European Community who need these changes, it is Ukraine who needs these changes," he said.
In this context V. Lytvyn informed that on February 9 the Parliament will consider the draft of the new Code of Criminal Procedure. The Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada stated that two alternative drafts have been registered too.
The Head of the Parliament believes that it is necessary to hold a serious discussion of the drafts and determine what is useful and necessary in every one of them, and then adopt one document. He supposes that the draft submitted by the President of Ukraine will be adopted as a basis. V. Lytvyn noted that "the opponents of the bill do not need to make much fuss; on the contrary, it is necessary to apply energies to adopt the final version of the draft".
From the perspective of the Verkhovna Rada, the main thing about this bill is that "it should meet today?s realities, correlate with similar documents in civilized countries; we need to have a guarantee of its implementation". He informed that the results of analysis conducted by experts of the Verkhovna Rada Secretariat testify to the fact that in case this complicated and contradictory but so necessary document is adopted, we will have a problem with its implementation. "We need to take it into account today," said V. Lytvyn.
According to the leader of the Parliament, new Code of Criminal Procedure will be first of all examined and applied by lawyers. "They will study every article, as this is their job, and lawyers are more flexible in this respect," he stressed. "It will be more complicated with the law enforcement and judicial system". According to him, this is an extended and relatively conservative system that exists despite legislative changes, which "perform first of all punitive function and not the function of protecting rights and liberties". "These are tradition and heritage of the past. We need to change our psychology in this respect and understand that it is wrong to just mechanically apply the norms," he noted.
The Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada noted that Ukraine has formally not fulfilled all obligations which it undertook entering the Council of Europe. In particular, this pertains to the new Code of Criminal procedure. Now this issue is subject to PACE recommendations.
V. Lytvyn stressed also that it is necessary to amend the Criminal Code too. He noted that this document is ten years old, but the articles that are considered disputable by the European community existed in the previous Code too and were borrowed from Soviet times. At the same time, he stressed that there are correspondent norms in legislative acts of other countries, including the countries of the European Union. However, in those countries they have different definitions of what is abuse of authority. The Head of the Parliament noted that the new code should contain motivation behind this or that decision.