The Ethics Council needs to complete the selection of candidates and allow the Verkhovna Rada to allow judges and other appointees to vote online.
The High Council of Justice Remains to Work five members – Viktor Gryshchuk, Oksana Blazhivska, Vitaliy Salikhov, Inna Plakhtiy, and the Chairman of the Supreme Court Vsevolod Knyazev. According to the Constitution, the GRP is authorized with at least 15 members. So, ten more members need to be appointed to resume GRP. Experts Mykhailo Zhernyakov and Halyna Chyzhyk write about this in their article for ZN.UA .
They remind that in 2021 three competitions for GRP positions started at once:
- competition for one vacant position under the quota of law universities;
- competition for two vacant positions under the quota of the Verkhovna Rada;
- competition for vacant positions under the quota of the Congress of Judges (currently there are eight vacancies).
Today, 33 candidates are running for office, including 17 judges. In December-January, the Ethics Council gathered information about them and even held the first eight interviews on February 21 and 23, just before the Russian invasion. As early as February 24, the Ethics Council announced the postponement of all scheduled interviews. Thus, the process has been frozen.
“Currently, the Ethics Council has no obstacles to resuming interviews with candidates , given that information about them has already been collected, and such interviews can be conducted in full. in the remote mode with use of means of video communication “, – it is told in a material.
Experts note that these candidates may be enough to restore the GRP's powers, ie to appoint ten members to the High Council of Justice at once.
“Of course, we can't predict in advance exactly how many of the 33 candidates the Ethics Council recommends. However, independent analysis of NGOs gives cause for optimism. “, – they write.
Given that competitions for GRP positions on the basis of quotas of different subjects are in fact no different, except for the competition on the basis of the quota of the Congress of Judges, in which only judges or retired judges can participate, other subdivisions may also be allowed. projects with vacancies in the GRP, such as the president, to nominate candidates recommended by the Ethics Council.
The only problem that remains is how to conduct Congress of Martial Law Judges. Usually, the Congress of Judges envisages a multi-day conference in Kyiv with the participation of about 300 judges from all over Ukraine. Gathering 300 judges in one place is now extremely risky, especially since it can be difficult for representatives from the south and east to get to the capital. Therefore, the best solution would be to hold a congress remotely and select future GRP members online. To do this, several points need to be made to the law on the judiciary.
“It is possible to restore the work of the GRP without violating the Constitution and in the spirit of the reform launched last year, All that is needed is for the Returning Ethics Council to complete the selection of candidates and for the Verkhovna Rada to allow judges and other appointees to vote online. work “, – experts summed up.
Read also: Chairman of the Supreme Court Vsevolod Knyazev: “I am ashamed of the decision of GRP members who resigned two days before the war”
Read more about the situation in the article “How to quickly restore the GRP without violating the Constitution.”
