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The Supreme Court late on Sept. 18 annulled changes to the High Qualification Commission’s regulations that effectively blocked the work of the Public Integrity Council, the judiciary’s civil society watchdog, declaring them unlawful.
The High Qualification Commission, which opposed the decision, did not respond to a request for comment.
The court upheld a lawsuit filed by Vitaly Tytych, one of the Public Integrity Council’s two coordinators.
The High Qualification Commission had asked for an out-of-court settlement but had failed to send any proposals on the settlement by the deadline in September.
The Public Integrity Council argued that no law gives the High Qualification Commission the right to set regulations for the council.
Tytych provided evidence during the court hearings that the High Qualification Commission could have falsified the decision to change the regulations by backdating the changes.
The regulations, which were introduced in early 2018, seek to block the Public Integrity Council from vetoing judges unless there is a ruling by the High Council of Justice, the National Agency for Preventing Corruption (NAPC), the Council of Judges, or the State Fiscal Service.
The Public Integrity Council argued that the new regulations stem from confusion between the criminal prosecution of judges or disciplinary penalties on the one hand, and the assessment of judges’ professional ethics and integrity on the other.
Under the law on the judiciary and the status of judges, the Public Integrity Council’s role is to not to assess whether a judge has committed a crime or a disciplinary violation, but to assess whether judges meet integrity and professional ethics criteria according to international practice, the council argued. The Public Integrity Council assesses judges based on the Bangalore Principles on Judicial Conduct and the Code of Judicial Ethics.
Another regulation is that any decision of the Public Integrity Council must be signed by all of its members. The council says that the requirement would delay or block most of its decisions.
In March, the Public Integrity Council suspended its participation in the qualification assessment of judges due to the new regulations.
The High Qualification Commission is planning to vet all of Ukraine’s approximately 6,000 lower-court judges this year. The Public Integrity Council has argued that the process is being falsified, as neither the High Qualification Commission nor the Public Integrity Council would have time to vet such a large number of judges in such a short time.
Judges who have successfully passed vetting include ones who passed unlawful rulings against EuroMaidan activists, as well as those with violations in their asset declarations and those who violated human rights, the council says.
