It Would Be Convenient for the Business Community to Have a Legislative Basis from Creation to Liquidation of an Enterprise in One Code

On September 10, 2021, the VI International Forum on Business Protection took place, traditionally hosted by the newspaper Yurydychna Praktyka.

The Vice-President of the Supreme Court, the President of the Commercial Cassation Court within the Supreme Court Bohdan Lvov took part in the first session "Ukrainian Business Landscape". He reminded that the first commercial court had been established in Odessa on the initiative of the Duke de Richelieu in 1808. Since then, commercial courts have always stood up for economic rights. The President of the Commercial Cassation Court within the Supreme Court is convinced that the present courts are capable of providing adequate protection. This is particularly due to lawyers. “Although today they say that procedural legislation allegedly works for lawyers, I can assure you that 10 years ago they said that it worked for prosecutors. The problem is therefore not one of legislation but of professionalism. State law enforcement agencies need to pay more attention to recruitment and the training of the staff, then their competition with lawyers will be relatively proportionate. The court cannot be on someone's side and must be guided only by the law, therefore, when one of the parties underperforms, the court does not have an objective opportunity to make a fair decision and the adversarial principle comes to the fore," said the President of the Commercial Cassation Court within the Supreme Court.

Bohdan Lvov also raised an extremely important issue for the judiciary which negatively affects the work of the courts - the shortage of judges and staff, which is particularly acute in criminal justice. Indeed, according to the speaker, today at the appellate level there is simply not enough judges for the formation of panels to consider criminal proceedings: “For me, the Kharkiv Court of Appeal has been a striking example of reforming for many years; it had 94 judges in December 2013 and now the number has dropped to 14. That is, the staffing of this court is 14.8%, and the understaffing exceeds 85%. And this has a negative impact primarily on the quality of court decisions and the timing of their consideration."  

In response to a question about draft law No. 6013 on the repeal of the Commercial Code of Ukraine, the President of the Commercial Cassation Court within the Supreme Court noted that the cancellation was premature until all aspects of business activities were standardized: “I agree that the current Commercial Code of Ukraine does not quite correspond to modern realities and needs significant changes. I am a proponent of the Entrepreneur Code (or the Entrepreneurship Code). In my opinion, it would be very convenient for the business community to obtain a legislative basis from creation to liquidation of an enterprise in one code. However, before repealing any normative act, it is necessary to determine the scope of all relations that it regulates, and to normalize these issues in other instruments. Therefore, the proposal to abolish the Commercial Code of Ukraine today and to adopt an entrepreneurship code within seven years is illogical. It is better to do the opposite: to adopt a new code now, and to abolish the Commercial Code of Ukraine in seven years,” Bohdan Lvov is convinced.