The Council of Europe (CoE) held a conference on the impact of criminal misdemeanours on human rights and criminal justice in Ukraine. Held in a hybrid format of face-to-face and online participation, the aim of the conference was to provide a platform for main criminal justice actors to exchange their views and experience on achievements and challenges of the introduction of criminal misdemeanours in Ukraine. The conference thus brought together key national criminal justice stakeholders: police officers, prosecutors, judges, advocates, members of the parliament, civil society organisations, as well as national and international criminal justice experts of the Council of Europe. Besides the participants from Kyiv, police officers, prosecutors and advocates from the biggest Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipro and Lviv also joined the conference remotely.
The focus of the conference was the current state of affairs with respect to the application of criminal misdemeanours almost a year after this mechanism has come into force in Ukraine. Focus was made on its impact on the effectiveness of criminal justice bodies as well as improvements or threats to human rights. The discussions during the conference were based on the study conducted by the CoE on the application of criminal misdemeanours for the first three months since this mechanism came into force.
Mr. Steen Nørlov, Head of the CoE Office in Ukraine, welcomed the speakers and participants of the conference. He highlighted that criminal justice reform is among the important areas for CoE cooperation with Ukraine. CoE acknowledges a lot of positive developments in this area since the adoption of the 2012 Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine, one of which is the introduction of criminal misdemeanours. This mechanism is meant to humanise the criminal justice system in case of minor offences and to improve the effectiveness of criminal justice system. It is important to monitor the implementation of this novelty.
Mr. Denys Monastyrskyi, Head of the Law Enforcement Committee of the Verkhovna Rada, stressed the importance of the mechanism of criminal misdemeanours for the members of his Committee as one of global changes in the criminal justice system recently introduced. He expressed gratitude for the CoE continued support in the process of introduction of criminal misdemeanours and with the monitoring of its implementation in practice. Mr. Monastyrskyi noted that although overall the criminal misdemeanours have been launched successfully, in autumn 2021 his Committee would consider potential legislative changes to fine-tune the system; he further noted that the conference could help in mapping the issues which would need to be fine-tuned.
Mr. Stanislav Kravchenko, Head of the Criminal Cassation Court of the Supreme Court, said that the criminal misdemeanours is in the spotlight of Ukrainian criminal justice system. It can be observed that criminal misdemeanours decreased the workload of criminal justice actors in many regions of Ukraine and humanised the criminal responsibility. At the same time, as Mr. Kravchenko admitted, the monitoring of the court proceedings has shown that there are some shortcomings which needs to be addressed.
Mr. Oleksandr Banchuk, Deputy Minister of Justice of Ukraine, said that criminal misdemeanours concern all members of the society, who experience criminal misdemeanours as offenders, victims, witnesses, etc. The Ministry of Justice is preparing legal amendments the aim of which would be to align the provisions concerning criminal misdemeanours with the respective CoE recommendations and to eliminate other shortcomings which become evident after one year of application of criminal misdemeanours in practice.
Ms. Duchenko Kateryna, Head of department for the supervision of the National Police of the Office of the Prosecutor General, reiterated that the topic of criminal misdemeanours is of importance for the Public Prosecution Service in Ukraine. She also noted that the OPG has fruitful cooperation with the National Police to identify and eliminate shortcomings which appear throughout the process of implementation of the criminal misdemeanours.
The main part of the conference comprised of two panels. Panel I was dedicated to the impact of criminal misdemeanours on effectiveness of investigations and work of criminal justice bodies, whereas Panel II was focused on the Impact of criminal misdemeanours on the observance of human rights in criminal proceedings.
The full video recording of the conference is available on YouTube.
The conference was organised within the framework of the Council of Europe Project “Human Rights Compliant Criminal Justice System in Ukraine” Phase II, which is a part of the Council of Europe Action Plan for Ukraine for 2018-2022
