Prioritised return: six months of complaint review at the High Council of Justice

On May 1, 2024, six months had passed since the restoration of the disciplinary functions of the High Council of Justice (HCJ). We analyzed the statistics of the HCJ’s activities: how members vote, how they deny complainants the right to appeal, which disciplinary complaints are prioritized, and which are delayed. The analysis covers both the overall work of the Council and the individual contributions of each member. Read “Prioritised return: six months of complaint review at the High Council of Justice” through the link.

Key trends we observed:

• Instead of following their regulations and prioritizing cases that could lead to the dismissal of judges or have significant public interest, the HCJ members focused on “clearing” the backlog of complaints in other ways. Most members of the “new” HCJ prefer to prioritise returning complaints and refusing to open cases. The HCJ “processed” 6,000 complaints in this manner. Meanwhile, genuinely important cases that interest the public are unjustifiably delayed. For example, cases where judges were caught taking bribes — such as the case of Judge Knyazev (rapporteur Burlakov) or the case of judges from the Kyiv Court of Appeal, Slyva, Hlyniany, Dziubin, and Palenyk (rapporteur Salikhov).
• Overall, the HCJ has disciplined 61 judges in six months, less than 1% of cases. This is worse than the performance of the “old” HCJ in the first half of 2021 before their disciplinary powers were suspended.
• The HCJ has continued the bad practice of its “predecessors” by not granting complainants the right to appeal decisions of the HCJ’s disciplinary chamber before the full composition of the Council. By law, this right always belongs to the judge against whom the decision was made, but the complainant only has this right with the permission of HCJ members. Unfortunately, the Council’s practice does not address this injustice, and the HCJ members often refuse appeals even when there is a clear need. This provision of the law remains a tool for manipulation and “protection” of judges of low integrity. This situation clearly needs to be changed through legislative initiatives.

We have previously reported on analytics dedicated to the positive practices and failures of the Council by DEJURE Foundation, Automaidan, and the Anti-Corruption Action Centre.

We will continue to monitor the HCJ’s activities. We hope that the Council will prioritise and consider cases of significant public interest, as these decisions are demanded by both Ukrainians and international partners.