On Thursday, January 11, 2024, another meeting of the Advisory Group of Experts took place, which was created to assist in assessing the moral qualities and level of competence in the field of law of candidates for the position of judge of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine.

The agenda of the AGE meeting was – the Adoption of a Decision on granting or denying to grant applications for self-recusal of members of the Advisory Group of Experts regarding the assessment of candidates for the position of judge of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine.

Three AGE members – Yaroslav Romaniuk, Nataliia Kuznietsova and Oksana Vasylchenko noted that they see a possible conflict of interest with some candidates and submitted relevant applications to recuse themselves from further work on their assessment.

In particular, the member of the AGE Ms. Oksana Vasylchenko announced her self-recusal regarding the candidate for the position of judge of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine Natalia Panchenko – Judge, Kyiv Circuit Administrative Court.

In turn, AGE member Ms. Nataliia Kuznietsova announced her self-recusal regarding the candidates for the position of judge of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine Andrii Boiko – Professor of the Chair for Criminal and Criminal Procedural Law, National University "Kyiv Mohyla Academy", Oleksandr Kopylenko – People's Deputy of Ukraine, Deputy Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on External Policy and Interparliamentary Cooperation, Ivan Nazarov – Deputy Head, National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance and Yurii Barabash – Professor at the Constitutional Law Chair, Vice-Rector for Research-and-Pedagogical Work and Strategic Development of Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University.

Member of the AGE, Secretary of the Advisory Group of Experts, Mr. Yaroslav Romaniuk also submitted applications for self-recusal regarding seven candidates for the position of judge of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine Serhii Martiev – Judge of Supreme Court Grand Chamber, Oleksandr Prokopenko – Judge of Supreme Court Grand Chamber, Olena Volkova – Judge of Yuzhnoukrainsky City Court of Mykolaiv Oblast, Vadym Ignatenko – Judge of Supreme Court Cassation Civil Court, named before – Andrii Boiko, Alla Oliinyk – Judge of Supreme Court Cassation Civil Court and Oleksandr Korovaiko – Chief Judge, Kherson Appellate Court.

The Advisory Group of Experts considered all 12 applications, got acquainted with the arguments of members regarding the reasons for self-recusal and made a unanimous decision – to approve all applications of Yaroslav Romaniuk, Natalia Kuznietsova and Oksana Vasylchenko about self-recusal regarding assessment of candidates for the position of judge of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine.

A member of the Advisory Group who has recused himself/herself or whose recusal has been requested by a candidate for the position of a judge of the Constitutional Court does not participate in the voting.

And according to AGE Regulations, if the member is recused or disqualified, that member:

- has no access to the information about the concerned Candidate of the Assessment and with whom there is a conflict of interests;

- refrains from taking part in collecting information about the concerned Candidate;

- does not participate in the preparation of materials regarding such Candidate;

- does not vote or discuss the Candidate; and,

- absents themselves when the Candidate is discussed.

The recusal or disqualification applies throughout all subsequent stages of the Assessment.

Regarding all other candidates and activities of the Advisory Group, the member continues to exercise its powers.

All activities restricted for members are performed by his deputy.

After voting AGE Chairman Ales Zalar thanked to all colleagues for their fruitful work and emphasized the importance of today's decisions:

“For AGE it was very important to consider the issue of self-recusals of AGE members as soon as possible, because we really have a lot of work ahead of us in assessing candidates. We received almost three thousand pages of materials from the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and the Council of Judges of Ukraine. And in addition, we are waiting for a response to our requests to the appropriate institutions to receive information about the candidates, and also we continue to receive information from public organizations".

Also, Ales Zalar once again called on the public to follow the work of the AGE information about candidates for the position of judge of the CCU, which can be used to assess moral qualities and the level of competence in the field of law, send it to the email address of the Advisory Group of Experts office@advisory.org.ua

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