Overdue reforms: what is happening with legal education on the path to the EU

The Parliament has missed the deadline for adopting a draft law that is part of the required reforms on Ukraine’s path to the European Union. This concerns legislative initiatives in the field of legal education that were supposed to enter into force by the end of the first quarter of 2026.

The Government approved the Rule of Law Roadmap back in May 2025. The measures scheduled for implementation in the first three months of 2026 are still awaiting progress. In particular, item 1.5.1, aimed at reforming the professional training of lawyers.

More details on the progress of fulfilling these requirements can be found in the article by the DEJURE Foundation. In it, an expert on legal education explains that the Roadmap provides for the adoption of a separate law aimed at:

• defining the legal foundations of legal training and initial access to the legal profession;

• institutionally separating legal education from the training of law enforcement personnel;

• revising and strengthening the system of accreditation of legal education programs.

All of this is necessary to avoid endlessly overloading the courts and instead train lawyers in line with European professional standards. In addition, there are a number of legislative initiatives intended to regulate multi-million bonuses granted largely for questionable academic degrees held by judges. As established by DEJURE Foundation experts, hundreds of millions of hryvnias are spent on these bonuses from the state budget.

The final deadline for adopting the document expired on March 31. The draft law has not been adopted; moreover, it has not even been registered in Parliament. According to available information, the draft was prepared as early as mid-last year, and members of Parliament received it at that time. The Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, responsible for implementing this item, only at the beginning of 2026 attempted to create a separate working group to draft the law. This is yet another example of desynchronization between the Government and Parliament.

In addition, items 1.5.6 and 1.5.7 remain unfulfilled:

1.5.6 — Unification of standards for legal education students and revision of the Unified State Qualification Exam program based on new unified standards, with a focus on teaching EU law, ethics, and professional responsibility of lawyers — the deadline for this item expired in the second quarter of 2025, that is, on June 30.

1.5.7 — Extending the requirement to pass the Unified State Qualification Exam in law, law enforcement, and international law to graduates of all categories without exceptions (through amendments to the Cabinet of Ministers Resolution of May 21, 2019, No. 497) — this was to be implemented by the end of December 2025.

As a result, we see a situation typical for Ukrainian authorities: the requirements for moving toward the EU are formally established, deadlines are set, but their actual implementation is absent. While necessary decisions remain stalled between the Government, Parliament, and relevant authorities, European integration does not accelerate — it is slowed down by inaction.