Presidential bill rolls prosecutor reform back to 2014 — expert
global.espreso.tv
Wed, 30 Jul 2025 18:20:00 +0300

Criminal justice expert Yevhen Krapyvin stated this on the European Space with Yuriy Fizer program on Espreso TV."Right now, we are in a situation where we need to quickly resolve the problem. Later, when we adopt this compromise version, we will discuss where to go next. It seems to me that at the level of anti-corruption infrastructure, we will be able to establish a certain point and agree on how to move forward—there will be no problem with that. But unfortunately, the presidential bill does not repeal other changes that are less talked about in this law, which has already come into force," Krapyvin noted.According to the criminal justice expert, there are negative changes, for example, to the law on the prosecutor’s office. Previously, all prosecutors were selected through a competition, but now the competition is not mandatory during martial law, and this could remain in the future or even permanently. This also does not meet EU standards. There is also the possibility of dismissing people who were effectively deprived of their positions due to the reorganization of units by the leadership—this also does not comply with either the decision of the appellate court or European standards."And I think that in other components in the field of the rule of law, where there is a reform of the prosecutor’s office, we have experienced a rollback, and I don’t know how we will reach an agreement—in fact, we are returning to 2014, and we will simply be redoing what has already been done, instead of making further progress.The nearest milestone is the competition for a managerial position in the prosecutor’s office. But what kind of competition for managerial positions can we talk about if now anyone with a law degree can be appointed as a prosecutor, without assessing their professional skills, practical knowledge, integrity, and so on? So, we will deal with this situation, but let’s first adopt the presidential law and at least restore the status quo for the anti-corruption infrastructure—let’s return to the state we were in before," Krapyvin concluded.The EU has warned Ukraine that if the independence of NABU and SAPO is not restored and the provisions of bill No. 12414 are not fully repealed, financial assistance will be frozen.
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