Is it really an improve? On the amendments to the Law on Public Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine
July 07, 2015Robert Boer, the Head of the EUAM Administration of Justice Advisory Unit:
“The Law on Public Prosecutor’s Office without amendments like it was adopted last year in October would mean a legal chaos. These amendments were needed to make the Law practical and implementable. For example, the Law talked about the Local Prosecutors Offices and this is something that Ukraine doesn’t have at the moment. So now, there is a time till mid-December to merge all district offices into 178 Local Prosecutor’s Offices. This is a crucial step forward.
It is worth mentioning, that many functions were taken away from the Prosecutor’s Office, like the general supervision that gave the Prosecutor’s Office a big power in Ukraine. However, this function still mentioned in the Constitution and it needs to be stripped away.
Besides the reduction of staff and merging of the district offices, the other crucial change is the introduction of the Specialized Anticorruption Unit within the Prosecutor’s Office. Ukraine has established already the National Anticorruption Bureau (NABU) but it is impossible to do the investigation without specialized prosecutors. They have to take the case to the court. So it was decided to have a specialized unit within the Prosecutor’s Office to do the work together with NABU. Corruption cases are usually complicated and they involve cooperation with other countries. It is a necessity for the investigation to have specialized qualified staff and international cooperation”.
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