Members of the High Council of Justice Vitalii Salikhov, Oksana Blazhivska, Inna Plakhtii, together with representatives of the judiciary, held consultations with experts of the Council of Europe on optimizing the procedure of selection and appointment of judges. The meeting was organized by the Council of Europe Project “Support for judicial institutions and processes to strengthen access to justice in Ukraine”. The purpose of the meeting is to determine the priority areas of expert assistance, exchange of experience in order to develop perfect procedures.
Members of the HCJ stressed that the current staffing crisis in courts was exacerbated by the lack of plenipotentiary composition of the Council. Acting Chairman of the HCJ Vitalii Salikhov focused on the need to urgently resume the work of the HCJ. “The first task is to hold congresses. In addition, we have repeatedly appealed to other subjects of the HCJ formation with a request to speed up the process of delegating members, because for a long time the issues of appointing judges, dismissing judges, as well as removal, termination of resignation, dismissal for violating the law remain unresolved. Filling vacancies and restoring the constitutional composition of the Council as soon as possible is a key issue for the judiciary,” he said.
Members of the HCJ stressed the need for the earliest possible resumption of appointment of judges. According to Oksana Blazhivska, there is a shortage of 2 058 judges in local courts (out of 7 028 judges, there are 4 986 judges, of which 4 763 are authorized). There are 628 vacancies in the courts of appeal (out of 1439 appointed judges, there are 825, of which 817 are authorized). Inna Plakhtii predicted an increase in the outflow of personnel from the courts due to threats related to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
In today’s conditions, the members of the HCJ consider it expedient to take measures to optimize selection and simplify access to the judicial profession. In their opinion, the selection stages should be shortened – to conduct short-term training at the NSJU and one test based on its results. At the same time, test tasks, including practical ones, should be checked by using exclusively computer technologies, preventing the impact of the human factor during the assessment. Such practice, noted Inna Plakhtii, exists in European countries.
Members of the HCJ spoke about an appeal to parliamentarians, which proposed ways to optimize the process of selection of judges. In addition to simplifying the procedure, Vitalii Salikhov, Oksana Blazhivska, Inna Plakhtii propose to unify approaches, avoid duplication of personnel functions by creating Qualification Chamber for Personnel Support of the Judicial System of the High Council of Justice. If such proposals are approved, the Selection Commission, established to conduct a competition for the position of a member of the HQCJU, would continue its work to conduct a competition for the position of a member of the Qualification Chamber. Candidates for the positions of members of the HQCJU who submitted documents would acquire the status of candidates for the positions of members of the Qualification Chamber. Members of the HCJ do not question the recently introduced approaches to the selection of the HQCJU members; it is only a matter of consolidating functions at the level of one body. Parliamentarians have already made such a proposal.
Serhii Demchenko, a member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Legal Policy, supported the proposal of members of the HCJ. “The idea of cutting costs is progressive; it’s a move forward for the judiciary. After all, we have two judicial governance bodies that duplicate functions related to the selection of judges,” he said. According to the People’s Deputy of Ukraine, the Venice Commission recommended concentrating personnel powers in one body. A corresponding draft law was even developed, but has not yet found support.
According to the Head of the Council of Judges of Ukraine Bohdan Monich, implementation of this initiative is not a matter of today, but of the future. “Discussions about combining the functions of the HCJ and the HQCJU deserve attention, however, in the conditions of the war and given how difficult the last reform was, such changes are not real at the moment. Our goal in the future is the structural modernization and optimization of the judiciary,” he said. According to the Head of the CJU, the first priority is to overcome the personnel crisis. He noted that in addition to the lack of more than two thousand judges, there is a significant difference in the workload of judges, in some courts the indicator (receipt of cases per year) is exceeded 12 times. According to Bohdan Monich, the situation can be levelled by secondment to the courts, where judges have an excessive workload. He also spoke in favour of unifying the procedures for selecting judges of the first and appeal instances.
Rector of the National School of Judges of Ukraine Mykola Onishchuk considers it acceptable, taking into account critical circumstances, to temporarily reduce the duration of special training of candidates for judges from 9 months to 9 weeks, for a certain period. At the same time, he noted that special training is a necessary step to ensure the level of qualification of a future judge. “Ukraine should comply with the European standard of access to the judicial profession, which provides for special training. After all, higher requirements are put forward for a judge than for a lawyer,” Mykola Onishhchuk noted. He expressed readiness for a joint search for optimal model, spoke in favour of automating the processes of test verification and involving certified specialists in verification of anonymous practical tasks.
Those present stressed the importance of forming a personnel reserve.
Consultations on these issues will continue.
The meeting was also attended by: Mariana Kiko, Head of the Cooperation Program Division of the Department for Human Rights, Justice and Legal Cooperation Standards of the Directorate General for Human Rights and the Rule of Law of the Council of Europe; Nina Betteto, judge of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Slovenia, President of the CCEJ (2020-2021), international adviser to the Council of Europe; Gerhard Reisner, international adviser to the Council of Europe; Yevhen Petrov, judge of the Supreme Court; Victor Potapenko, member of the Council of Judges of Ukraine.