Council of Europe supports the ongoing process of criminal justice system reforms, in particular, the reform of the Public Prosecutor’s Service of Ukraine. The support includes, inter alia, provision of expertise to draft criminal procedure legislation in order to ensure its compliance with the Council of Europe standards.
Acting on a request of the Verkhovna Rada’s Committee on Law Enforcement, the Council of Europe provided the former with an expert assessment of the Draft Law No. 3009a “On amendments to the Criminal procedural code of Ukraine to the part on securing the implementation of the functions of the prosecutor's office”.
The expert assessment was writte by Prof. Dr. Lorena Bachmaier Professor of Law, Complutense University of Madrid, with further comments of Mr. James Hamilton, former Director of Public Prosecutions of Ireland, former President of the International Association of Prosecutors and ex-member of the Venice Commission on behalf of Ireland.
The expert assessment provides total of 19 recommendations for the improvement of provisions of the Draft Law. Among them, special attention should be paid to the provisions amending:
- art. 36 part 1, art. 37 part 1 of the Criminal Procedure Code as it may have negative implications on the independence of individual prosecutors.
- art. 214 in conjunction with art. 7 part 1 para 7-2 of the Criminal Procedure Code in order to prevent the risk of arbitrariness in registration of ‘criminal reports’ in the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations.
The full text of the expert assessment can be downloaded here. It should be noted that the expert assessment represents an opinion of its authors and do not constitute an official opinion of the Council of Europe.
The expert assessment was provided within the framework of the Council of Europe Project “Human rights compliant criminal justice system in Ukraine”, which is part of the Council of Europe Action Plan for Ukraine 2018-2022.
