Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Canceled Parliamentary Immunity

On September 3 Verkhovna Rada passed (373 ayes) the law of Ukraine “On removal of the parliamentary privilege from Ukrainian parliamentarians.” According to the approved bill, two paragraphs were removed from article 80 of the Constitution of Ukraine which said that MPs were guaranteed immunity and they could not be prosecuted without the consent of the Verkhovna Rada. In 2017, then-President Petro Poroshenko introduced a bill to repeal immunity, suggesting that the changes take effect in 2020. It is for this bill that the new Verkhovna Rada has already voted. It should be noted that Moldovan government has also repeatedly proposed such an initiative. In 2017, the government approved the Parliament’s initiative to abolish parliamentary immunity, prepared by the Ministry of Justice. Under the draft law, the Venice Commission established that “inviolability against the arrest, detention, search and prosecution in cases when an offence was committed is the most problematic and controversial part of the concept of parliamentary immunity.” The European Court of Human Rights claims that the immunity of parliamentarians can violate the citizens’ equality before the law. Moldova’s Constitutional Court gave a positive opinion on the issue of exclusion of MPs’ inviolability. However, the adoption of this bill by the parliament was delayed until the deadline for its adoption had expired. In 2019, Șor Party proposed depriving MP’s immunity, but their initiative did not have the necessary number of votes to pass by parliament. Newsmaker