The Supreme Court Discussed Draft Law No. 5844 "On the Principles of the State Policy of Transition Period"

The Supreme Court met with experts from the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) to discuss the draft Law of Ukraine “On the Principles of the State Policy of Transition Period” No. 5844 of 9 August 2021.

Stanislav Kravchenko, President of the Criminal Cassation Court within the Supreme Court, noted that the Supreme Court supported the expediency of creating an integral legislative basis for the implementation of the state policy of transition period. 

At the same time, having worked through the draft law, the Supreme Court provided a number of comments to its text, but not all of them were taken into account in the latest version of the document.

Thus, the Head of the SC Department for Analytical and Legal Work Rasim Babanly said that the Supreme Court had issued a warning on the practical implementation of the draft Law No. 5844, which concerned, in particular, the possibility of conflicts in case of inconsistency between the Criminal Code of Ukraine and a special law which does not provide for amendments to the Code.

In addition, the draft law defines the range of persons who cannot be exempted from serving a sentence, but this issue can be resolved exclusively by the Law of Ukraine "On the application of amnesty in Ukraine".

The participants also discussed issues related to criminal proceedings conducted by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies whereas the trial was held in the temporarily occupied territory, and drew attention to the problem of including the term of imprisonment served by a person in that territory.