Draft Law No. 3711 Will Promote Overcoming Personnel Gap in Judicial System – SC

On 22 June 2020 the President of Ukraine submitted the Draft Law “On Amending the Law of Ukraine “On the Judiciary and the Status of Judges” and Certain Laws of Ukraine Regarding the Operation of the Supreme Court and Judicial Governance Bodies” (No. 3711) to the Parliament for consideration and declared it as urgent.

In fact, this draft law is aimed at the enforcement of the judgments of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine of 18 February 2020 and 11 March 2020, as well as at the implementation of the recommendations of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) of 9 December 2019 regarding the Law of Ukraine “On Amending the Law of Ukraine “On the Judiciary and the Status of Judges” and Certain Laws of Ukraine Regarding the Operation of Judicial Governance Bodies” (No. 193-IX).

The draft law, inter alia, regulates the issue of justice administering by judges of the Supreme Court of Ukraine. While commenting the noted issue, Valentyna Danishevska, the President of the Supreme Court, emphasized that the Supreme Court was expecting for this supplementing, since at that moment the SC had about 50 thousand pending cases.

The High Council of Justice provided the Draft Law No. 3711 with positive advisory opinion. Valentyna Danishevska underlined that the Supreme Court, on its behalf, generally supported the amendments provided by the draft law aimed, primarily, at removing the deadlock in the work of the High Qualification Commission of Judges.

Presently, the judicial system suffers from serious personnel gap – 96 judges have left it only during last three months. According to the High Council of Justice, as of 19 June 2020 the number of authorized judges amongst the declared number was following: in appeal courts of general jurisdiction – 61 %; in local courts of general jurisdiction – 60 %; in appeal administrative courts – 73 %; in circuit administrative courts – 74 %; in appeal commercial courts – 73 %; in local commercial courts – 73 %. In other words, amongst 7030 judges of operating local and appeal courts, in fact, 4881 judges are appointed at their positions, 4454 judges are authorized; that is only 63.5 % of the overall need.

Thus, without prompt renewal of operation of the HQCJ the system will face personnel collapse, and the guarantees of the consideration of judicial cases within reasonable terms will not be performed because of the lack of judges in courts. The SC President summed up that the lack of judges in local and appeal courts had reached critical indices and, unfortunately, the situation worsened every week. Therefore, to overcome the personnel gap in the judicial system, the prompt adoption of the Draft Law No. 3711 is desirable.