On 14 July 2026, a meeting was held at the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, marking a further step in the development of one of the substantive areas of the Constitutional Court’s international cooperation – the dialogue with the constitutional judiciary of the Czech Republic. The Acting Chairman of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, Oleksandr Petryshyn, and Judges Viktor Gorodovenko, Oksana Hryshchuk, Viktor Kychun, and Oleksandr Vodiannikov met with the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Czech Republic to Ukraine Luboš Veselý, and the Special Representative of the Chairman-in-Office – Project Coordinator in Ukraine Petr Mareš.
Opening the meeting, Oleksandr Petryshyn recalled that cooperation between the constitutional courts of Ukraine and the Czech Republic has been ongoing for over a quarter of a century, since 1998, and has since developed into systematic and substantive interaction. He noted that the legal systems of the two countries have much in common, and that the similarity of certain institutional and procedural approaches provides a sound basis for the practical exchange of experience. Professional dialogue between the courts, he emphasised, deepens a shared understanding of the fundamental values of European legal civilisation – human dignity, freedom, democracy, and the rule of law.
The judges of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine briefed the guests on the current state of constitutional justice reforms, in particular on the new procedure for selecting candidates for judicial posts at the Court and on the critical importance of filling vacancies in a timely manner for the Court’s stable operation. It was emphasised that even in wartime, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine does not suspend its mission – the protection of constitutional human rights and freedoms and the inviolability of democratic principles. Every decision of the Court today carries particular weight for the preservation of the constitutional order and the stability of the state’s legal system.
The participants paid particular attention to the tangible outcomes of cooperation between the courts. A key event of the past year was the study visits by judges and staff of the Secretariat of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic in February 2026, organised with the support of the OSCE Support Programme for Ukraine. These visits have already yielded two concrete results.
Firstly, access to Czech constitutional case law has become a reality for Ukrainian legal professionals. As a direct result of the discussions held during the visits, the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic launched an AI assistant in the Ukrainian language within its NALUS case law database. This has significantly facilitated access for Ukrainian judges, lawyers and researchers to the case law of the Czech constitutional court – whilst also transforming Czech case law into an effective tool for comparative legal analysis within the Constitutional Court of Ukraine’s own deliberative processes.
Secondly, the Czech experience is of particular significance for the further improvement of the legislative framework governing the functioning of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. The Constitutional Court of Ukraine has identified the model of disciplinary proceedings against judges of the Czech Constitutional Court as one of the most relevant benchmarks for Ukraine. The insights gained during the visits directly influenced the Constitutional Court of Ukraine’s position in the debate on the draft law concerning the disciplinary liability of the Court’s judges: an adapted Czech institutional model of disciplinary proceedings was presented during parliamentary discussions in May 2026 as a proposal for Ukrainian legislative regulation.
The meeting participants cited these two examples as clear confirmation that institutional dialogue between the courts is already yielding concrete, practical results.
The parties agreed on further project-based cooperation with the OSCE Support Programme for Ukraine, aimed at strengthening the institutional capacity of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, improving the quality of the drafting and reasoning of its decisions, developing the Court’s communication policy, and furthering Ukraine’s progress towards European integration.
The meeting marked the latest stage in the professional dialogue between the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, the Czech Republic, and the OSCE, and set out the guidelines for further practical cooperation.
