On 20 December 2021, the Council of Europe organised expert consultations on regulations regarding recruitment and promotion of prosecutors adopted by the Body in Charge of Disciplinary Proceedings (BCDP). The consultations were after provision of expert comments to these regulations by the Council of Europe at the request of BCDP. The main objective of the event was to present recommendations concerning the aforementioned regulations and to discuss with the BCDP and other international partners possible ways of their implementation.

The event brought together members of the BDCP, representatives of the Council of Europe and its national and international consultants and other international partners.

In his opening remarks, Steen Nørlov, Head of the Council of Europe Office in Ukraine, highlighted the importance of the role of the BDCP in strengthening the institutional independence of the public prosecution service and procedural autonomy of individual prosecutors. He expressed the hope that that these expert consultations would contribute to finding the ways of addressing the shortcomings identified by the Council of Europe consultants and other international partners with respect to the regulations.

Andrii Hnativ, Head of the BDCP, thanked the Council of Europe for support and underlined the importance of this event to bring the developed regulations in line with European standards and best practices. He also stressed that the BDCP was open to consider provided recommendations to the regulations and expressed readiness for further cooperation.

During the discussions all international partners presented their opinions, to which members of the BDCP provided their feedback. It was agreed that members of the BDCP would consider incorporation of recommendations into the regulations by developing draft amendments to these regulations and would present the draft amendments to international partners before their adoption. It was also noted that discussion of the draft amendments may require another round of consultations before their adoption.

The expert consultations were organised 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.