Expert: Draft law on the Bar should be adopted to complete judicial reform

A draft law on the Bar, which introduces new views on a barrister in judicial proceedings, should be passed as part of the continuation of judicial reform in Ukraine.

Kostiantyn Krasovsky, the Head of the Main Department of Law Policy at the Presidential Administration of Ukraine, the Secretary of the Council on Judicial Reform, made a corresponding statement at the annual Conference of Regional Councils on Justice Reform on Tuesday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"As I’ve said, it [judicial reform] has not been completed yet. We have to adopt a law on the Bar, which lays down the new principles of managing the Bar system and ensures its independence, non-corporatization and introduces new views on a barrister’s personality in judicial proceedings," Krasovsky said.

It is necessary to think about the legal education, "because it is the basic level of how lawyers will further achieve fairness as the goal of justice in the triangle ‘judge-prosecutor-barrister,” he noted.

 “The request for fairness is the largest one in our country,” Krasovsky stressed.

He recalled that the necessary legislative acts have been elaborated in recent years for the implementation of specific steps of the judicial reform. "I am talking about the law on the judicial system and the status of judges, the law on the High Council of Justice, as well as the procedural codes... Some major changes have occurred, but they have occurred on the basis of, as many people say, tectonic shifts that appeared in 2016 after the constitutional reform," the expert noted.

At the same time, he added that "the constitutional reform based on European standards has laid down a new look, a new content of the justice system for many years to come."

"The reform has not been completed yet, it is still being implemented, but we have managed to achieve some kind of cooperation in reaching the ideas of the reform strategy due to the fact that the representatives of certain circles, representatives of the professional community, civil society gathered at the beginning," Krasovsky said.

As reported, in September 2018, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko submitted to the Verkhovna Rada a draft law of Ukraine “On the Bar and Practice of Law” (No. 9055), which proposes to expand the professional rights of barristers and secure additional guarantees of the practice of law.

The Ukrainian Parliament Committee on Policy of Law and Justice approved the draft law and recommended that Parliament should adopt it in the first reading.

On December 14, Regis Brillat, Special Advisor to Council of Europe's Secretary General for Ukraine, said that the presidential draft law “On the Bar and Practice of Law” (No. 9055) met the requirements of the European Union.

In turn, Council of Europe expert Rytis Jokubauskas, who analyzed draft law No. 9055 for compliance with the CoE standards, noted that “the provisions of this draft law generally comply with the Council of Europe standards for the regulation and protection of the profession of barrister, and in certain areas provide even greater protection to barristers in the exercise of their professional duties, in the self-regulation and self-government of their community than the standards require."

The Board of Directors of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine also appealed to the Ukrainian lawmakers with a request to pass the positive and progressive provisions of the draft law No. 9055 “On the Bar and Practice of Law.”

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