Today, November 23, 2022 the Second Senate of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine at the public part of the plenary session in the form of written proceedings considered the case upon the constitutional complaint of Kyrylo Burma on conformity of the provisions of Article 51 of the Civil Code of Ukraine (hereinafter referred to as the Code) to the Constitution of Ukraine.
During the plenary session, the Judge-Rapporteur in the case Vasyl Lemak outlined the content of the constitutional complaint, the grounds for initiating constitutional proceedings in the case, and the complainant's argumentation.
As was noted by the Judge-Rapporteur, K. Burma appeals against the provisions of Article 51 of the Code, which stipulates that “the legal acts regulating the entrepreneurial activity of legal entities are applied to the entrepreneurial activity of natural persons, unless otherwise established by law or does not follow from the essence of relations”.
Substantiating the assertion that the impugned provisions are unconstitutional, the complainant notes that legal acts regulating the entrepreneurial activities of legal entities have been applied to an individual entrepreneur, and therefore, in such legislative regulation, in his opinion, the principle of non-discrimination has been violated (Article 24 of the Constitution). In addition, as a result of the implementation of the impugned provisions, the application of the principle of irreversibility in time of laws and other normative legal acts in the aspect of mitigating the liability of a person (Article 58 of the Constitution of Ukraine) has been made impossible for a natural person-entrepreneur.
The Judge-Rapporteur also informed that requests were sent to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, and a number of higher education institutions to express positions on the issues raised in the constitutional complaint.
Having examined the case files at the public part of the plenary session, the Second Senate proceeded to the in-camera part for a decision.
The session was attended by the authorised representative of the subject of the right to constitutional complaint, lawyer Stanislav Hryshyn, the Authorised Representative of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the Head of the Division of Relations with Justice Bodies of the Apparatus of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Arkadii Laptiiev and other citizens of Ukraine.
The public part of the plenary session is available on the Court's official website under the heading “Archive of video broadcasts of the sessions”.
