Draft Report Discretion of Administrative Bodies and Judicial Control
11 December 2020
Discretionary powers enable a public authority, a local self-governance body, or any other administrative authority (hereinafter – administrative authority) to make the best balanced and fair decisions when applying law.
In 2019, Ukrainian Administrative Procedure Monitoring, which was carried out by the EU Project Pravo-Justice, dealt with discretion of administrative authorities and judicial control over its application. The results of the
monitoring showed that the domestic law lacks clear rules on the limits of judicial interference with the discretion of administrative authorities while in the meantime, there is no distinction between the discretion of elected and
non-elected authorities and no difference in the scope of judicial review of individual and collective decisions. At the same time, the study found that the concepts of interpretation of laws and discretion are not sufficiently
distinguished in all areas of Ukrainian legal doctrine. Accordingly, within the framework of the EU Pravo-Justice Project, a group of national and international experts examined the discretion of administrative authorities and judicial control over its exercise in terms of legal doctrine, European standards, national legislation, and judicial practice.