Ministry of Justice supported by EU Project "Pravo-Justice" presented the findings of the monitoring report for 2021

On February 21, with the support of EU Project “Pravo-Justice”, there was launched a presentation of monitoring findings as to implementation and efficiency analysis in respect of regulations adopted in 2021, which presentation is conducted annually by the Directorate of Justice and Criminal Justice of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine. The monitoring is aimed at identifying legal regulation challenges, analyzing them and choosing the best way to address them.

“The monitoring report is an example of the principle of the Ministry's operations being improved. This approach allows us to assess how efficient our lawmaking is and how the legislation we are working on works in practical terms. In turn, this enables assessing what is actually happening. It is quite essential as well that a vast number of conclusions made by our experts in the monitoring report are based on case law, which is a criterion of truth," said Denys Maliuska, Minister of Justice of Ukraine, when giving opening remarks.

For four years, EU Project “Pravo-Justice” has been supporting the Ministry in identifying challenges related to application of legislation and making recommendations how to eliminate them.

“The Ministry of Justice, with the support of the Project and other stakeholders, has been conducting legislation monitoring for four years. It is improving every year. And it is quite crucial today to show that, in spite of external factors, Ukraine is focused on the future and goes on discharging its functions it usually carries out in peaceful circumstances," said Eric Svanidze, Acting Team Leader of EU Project “Pravo-Justice”.

Eric Svanidze highlighted such points as:

• Expanding and gradually implementing IT solutions to make monitoring more efficient. In particular, over the past two months, the Project has been working along with the Ministry to develop the features of such an IT solution and plans to support its further implementation.
• A greater inclusiveness of monitoring with the involvement of more and more stakeholders, both in identifying problems and discussing ways to solve them.
• The importance of using a methodology for assessing the impact of regulatory acts based on European best practices during the monitoring.

In turn, Oksana Tsymbrivska, Deputy Team Leader of EU Project “Pravo-Justice”, noted how essential it is to involve not only key stakeholders, but civil society representatives as well, including respective legal associations when it comes to monitoring: “Civil society is very active in Ukraine. To help the Ministry of Justice involve relevant NGOs at the next stage of the monitoring, EU Project “Pravo-Justice” will provide financial support for such activities under the respective grant.”

For five days, representatives of the Ministry of Justice, the Supreme Court, the judiciary, academia and legal communities, experts of EU Project “Pravo-Justice” will be discussing regulatory framework challenges in the areas of justice, judiciary, criminal justice, bar activities and free legal aid, forensic issues, enforcement of court decisions and bankruptcy issues. Each of the challenges identified is thoroughly elaborated in the monitoring report for 2021.

In analyzing each problem, the following items were examined: the applicable regulatory framework, jurisprudence of Ukrainian courts and that of the European Court of Human Rights, opinions expressed by the professional community, research materials, statistics, international experience. Based on the findings, options and ways to solve the problems identified are suggested.

After additional consultations, some proposals will be taken into account when drafting the work plan of the Ministry of Justice for 2022 and some of them will be used in drawing up regulations by other entities involved in lawmaking.