After being mired in corruption and political scandals for decades, Ukraine’s critically important Constitutional Court is now facing an attempt at reform, although its success is far from guaranteed.
The issue took center stage when the reform of the Constitutional Court became one of the European Union’s key conditions for Ukraine’s membership after the country became a candidate for the bloc in June 2022.
Under pressure from civic activists and the West, the Ukrainian authorities finally adopted a law on Constitutional Court reform on Aug. 17. According to the law, international experts will take part in the selection of new Constitutional Court judges to make sure that they are independent and comply with integrity standards.
However, doubts persist as Ukraine has a poor record of reforming the judiciary. In the past, even the participation of foreign experts did not prevent similar committees from selecting tainted candidates and rejecting the ones with clean reputation.
“There are risks that the process will be politicized,” Mykhailo Zhernakov, head of judicial watchdog Dejure, told the Kyiv Independent. “(This law) doesn’t guarantee results.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s spokesman Serhiy Nikiforov and Denys Maslov, head of the Ukrainian parliament’s legal policy committee, did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Read more at
