President of Ukraine Proposed Dissolving Constitutional Court

The bill may be unconstitutional On October 30, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky submitted a bill to the Verkhovna Rada to terminate the powers of country's Constitutional Court. He proposes cancelling one of the court decisions and terminate the powers of judges who made this decision. The draft law “On the restoration of public confidence in the constitutional proceedings” consists of two articles. The first one proposes declaring void the October 27th Constitutional Court’s decision. Then the court found a number of powers of the National Anti-Corruption Agency to be contrary to the basic law. The second article proposes dismissing judges who participated in the decision-making and beginning the procedure for a new Constitutional Court selection. The Ukrainian Constitution does not provide for judges of the Constitutional Court dismissal by decision of the parliament or the president. The decision on a judge dismissal must be taken by the court itself at least two-thirds of its constitutional composition. The termination of a judge’s powers is possible in the event of his powers expiration, reaching the age of 70, renouncing Ukrainian citizenship or violating the laws. What caused the conflict between the President and the Constitutional Court On October 27, the Constitutional Court declared illegal the powers of the anti-corruption department of Ukraine to control and verify the declarations of officials and deputies, round-the-clock access of citizens to the register of declarations, monitoring the lifestyle of officials and a number of provisions of the Law of Ukraine "On Preventing Corruption". After that, Zelensky initiated an urgent meeting of the National Security and Defense Council, Interfax reminded. Following the meeting, a government meeting was held in the presidential administration. The government ordered the anti-corruption agency to restore citizens 'access to the register of officials' declarations and provide a mechanism for their special verification, contrary to the court's decision, which, according to Ukrainian laws, cannot be appealed or canceled.