Weekly analytics for 23 – 30 of August
Political Points of the Centre of Policy and Legal Reform include a weekly expert analysis of the most important process in Ukraine in areas of constitutionalism, political parties and elections, governance and public administration reform, judiciary, combating corruption, criminal justice, etc.
If you want to receive expert Points for the last week of the current month every Tuesday by mail, please send an e-mail to media@pravo.org.ua.
The deadline for submission of documents for the participants of the competition to the HQCJ has ended
Event
On August 22, the office of the High Council of Justice (hereinafter – HCJ) completed the acceptance of documents for participation in the competition for the High Qualification Commission of Judges (hereinafter – HQCJ). 250 candidates submitted their documents, but this number may increase as candidates were able to send documents by mail on the last day of the deadline.
CPLR’s assessment
The selection of candidates for the HQCJ is one of the conditions for granting Ukraine the status of a candidate for membership in the European Union. It should be reminded that the powers of all members of the previous composition of the HQCJ were prematurely terminated by the presidential law back in November 2019. At that time, it was not possible to restart the activity of the commission due to the HCJ’s efforts to manipulate the results of the future selection, as a result of which international partners refused to delegate their representatives to the competition commission.
The new attempt to relaunch the HQCJ’s activity began in August 2021. After the formation of the Competition Commission and approval of the documents necessary for the competition, the acceptance of documents from applicants began, which was supposed to end at the beginning of March 2022. However, due to the start of the war, the Competition Commission temporarily suspended its activity.
In July 2022, the Competition Commission resumed its activity and announced the acceptance of documents from applicants.
The competition will be held in several stages:
• review of whether candidates would be admitted to the competition;
• verification and analysis of candidate data, based on the results of which a list of candidates admitted for interview will be compiled (maximum four candidates per one vacant position);
• conducting interviews with candidates and formation of a list of those recommended for appointment (at least two candidates for each vacant position of member of the HQCJ).
In the future, the HCJ should appoint members to the HQCJ from among the candidates recommended by the Competition Commission. The HQCJ consist of a total of 16 members, of which eight are appointed from among judges or retired judges, although 11 members (of which at least six must be judges or retired judges) are sufficient for the HQCJ to have quorum to exercise its power.