Deputy Chairman of the HQCJU Mr. Stanislav Shchotka: In Ukraine, all the judicial corps is being scrutinized at the same time. There are no similar precedents worldwide!
“The new salary of judges: from UAH 35 thousand in local courts and up to 220 thousand in the Supreme Court”
In late March, the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine (HQCJU) had a conflict with the Public Integrity Council, which, according to the law, has been contributing to the Commission’s work in assessing the compliance of judges with ethical and integrity criteria since 2017. The tension between these structures emerged as early as at the competition to the new Supreme Court and had come to a boil during the general assessment of judges which is expected to cover more than five thousand judges in the country. The public activists accuse the Commission of the lack of transparency, navigating notorious judges through the procedure, hence the amending the Rules of Procedure, according to which, in particular, the Commission requires the PIC to confirm their opinion on a judge with signatures of all its members, became the last straw. The Public Integrity Council said that they cease working with the HQCJU to express the protest, but the Commission believes they will be able to continue work in this format as well. However, the members of the PIC challenged the provisions of the HQCJU Rules of Procedure in the Supreme Court, despite having criticized the principle of selection of the Court some time ago.
The High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine is a collegiate body consisting of 16 members. The HQCJU terms of reference include the selection and training of future judges, as well as the holding of a qualification assessment, which will be taken into account during competitions for positions in local courts. The candidate must take two tests – the knowledge of the state language and the competency in law. Subsequently, candidates study at the National School of Judges.
Moreover, the law currently provides for a procedure for assessing current judges, which consists of two stages – the test, during which the judge is tested for the knowledge of the law, and the practical task of writing a draft court decision. The test is checked by the software, and the practical task is evaluated by the Commission members. Both tasks are anonymous. In addition, the judge is undergoing psychological testing for a number of hours and an interview with a psychologist.
If a judge gains the passing score at this stage, he proceeds to the next one. At the second stage, the Commission is interviewing a judge based on the results of a personal dossier study.
The HQCJU now continues its work without public participation. For example, one of the latest decisions of the Commission was the recommendation to dismiss the judge of the District Administrative Court of Kyiv Mr. Bohdan Sanin, who on the day of the violent breakup of the student demonstration on Maidan prohibited peaceful assemblies from December 1, 2013, to January 7, 2014. According to the qualification assessment results, he failed to obtain the sufficient score and is recognized as incompliant to the occupied position.
The Deputy Chairman of the HQCJU and the Chairman of the Commission's Qualification Chamber Mr. Stanislav Shchotka in a conversation with Glavkom described the details of the examinations and training of judges, outlined his perception of the conflict with the PIC and assured that the oligarchs had no leverages on the current courts.
“Some say that all the former judges retained their positions, but at the same time 2,5 thousand people left the judicial system”.
- The civil control and active engagement of civil society as a whole is generally a positive aspect. We have to go a certain way to achieve this aim and create the appropriate institutions, Mr. Shchotka says, sipping his morning coffee in his office. - But the civil society and volunteers start playing an important role where the state and its institutions fail. Accordingly, in the opposite situation, when the authority is fully operational and performs its function well, the role of the public is minimized. Let's take military volunteers as the example. They made intense efforts when the situation was difficult, fulfilled their mission, but when the army achieved the appropriate level of organization and performance, the role of the volunteers has decreased. This is the case with the PIC. It is formally a component of this process because the law so envisages. But if the Commission is able to fully perform its function, then there is no danger that there will be some kind of the “wild west”...
The point is not that you do not perform your function at all. Representatives of the public are convinced that the Commission often selects “the wrong” judges.
As for the first instance courts, or local courts, we have not yet selected anyone. We are pushing this process forward, we announced the competition, and people submitted the documents. We received 5,338 applications. The number of people attending the examination was lower due to different reasons: we suspended some applicants who had problems with the documents; some people chose not to go to the exam on their own. 4,128 people were taking the exam in one day. There were two tests: the first one was to generally assess the appropriate level of state language mastery, the second was to estimate the legal knowledge. The first is shorter; the second one is more extensive. The law has established that a successful applicant must receive at least 75% of the maximum number of points. If the ceiling score is 100 points, you have to score 75 or more. 2,300 people more or less managed to complete this task. Of this number, we chose the 700 best competitors, with the highest score, and drew a line here. Then we explained the others: “Ladies and gentlemen, you are the winners too, you validated your knowledge, but currently we are unable to teach more than 700 people in the National School of Judges”.
Why should you teach them, aren't they experienced already?
According to the law, a person can apply for a judicial position if they are at least 30 years old and have at least five years of legal experience. These are people who worked as legal advisers, prosecutors; NABU detectives ... Many of them are court attorneys who regularly attend court proceedings. They are professionals, they know what a court is and what is its function, but they do not make decisions as judges. Now their training is to look at their future work through the eyes of the judge. They are taught the practical things a judge should do.
Do they pass exams in the school?
They are undergoing training at school. The training is modernized, there are no boring lectures there, when, like, a lecturer arrives, talks about his life and beliefs for half an hour while everybody takes a nap, and then the whole group goes out to have a smoke during the break. There are two trainers, the classes are interactive – students review model legal situations and cases, elaborate the methods of resolving them. They receive laptops with pre-loaded case study assignments. They sit together, discuss, make decisions, and generate ideas.
Is this education fully paid by the state?
Yes. This is purely a state official's work. A government contract is being arranged for the certain number of students who even receive a scholarship. For a period of study, they do not perform their functions in their previous work and cannot formally engage in other activities. For example, assistant judges, who are currently in school, have a three months' cycle. They work six days a week for ten hours. But this is a kind of intensive upgrade course because they are already well versed in the judicial system.
And others?
The law provides for 12 months of training unless the Commission decides on a different term. We held negotiations with the National School of Judges, which insisted on this particular term. But professional lawyers and all participants asked to squeeze it all into a shorter time span. And we have preliminarily approved the nine months' course for court jurists, lawyers, legal advisers, prosecutors who go to court and know the court specifics. After school, they will have to pass a qualification assessment and then a competition will be announced in which everyone will already be striving for the specific judicial positions. That is, we have not chosen any judges, neither good ones nor bad ones, so far.
There are claims that the whole judicial reform will collapse if the PIC withdraws from the process. But reform is not a dialogue between the Commission and the PIC. There used to be a four-tier court system: the former Supreme Court, the high specialized courts, appellate courts and local courts. Now there are three tiers. Two sections of the four were removed: the former Supreme Court of Ukraine and the high specialized courts, instead the renovated Supreme Court was introduced, which has a cassation function and an extraordinary function to ensure the case law consistency. Local courts are reorganized into district courts. The composition of the High Council of Justice has been completely replaced. The powers of the previous High Council of Justice and the HQCJU were terminated. Yes, it was frankly said to them: “Gentlemen, you have been not just underperforming, but horribly underperforming. Your tenure is terminated by law. Goodbye. Moreover, none of you may ever appear at the door of any state office anymore”. That is, the reputation of the previous Commission could not be worse.
When we came here, it was like a frozen locomotive that had to be warmed up and get running in other conditions. I had resigned in 2010 as a judge of the Supreme Court of Ukraine, but I returned to work and understood what I have to do. We are struggling, we have a lot of people who had to relocate from the occupied territories – there are more than 400 judges with families who need to be employed somewhere. On top of that, we have the reform that needs to be done, with the previous Commission's reputation shattered. There were allegations of bribery and things like that. We have completely changed the format of the Qualification Commission.
The President now has no direct leverages to actively influence the judicial corps, his function is just ceremonial – he cannot but sign a decree on the appointment of a judge who passed the HQCJU assessment and was approved by the High Council of Justice. The Parliament is fenced out of the process at all − there's no judge to be appointed through the Parliament any more. Earlier an MP could say to the judge: “Get to work, and when you come to the session hall, we will tell you how the things should be”.
Let's talk about the judicial corps purification and renovation. It is said that all the same judges retained their positions, but 2,5 thousand people left the judicial system. Last year, the High Council of Justice dismissed 594 judges. Moreover, I emphasize that we did not yet appoint anyone to vacancies in courts, we only announced the selection. We test people, teach, examine them.
However, people are enthusiastic to join the judiciary. There was a surge in 2016 when it was announced that all applicants would undergo a qualification assessment. Those who did not want to pass it had the opportunity to retire and receive a decent judge's allowance. The judges opted for retiring, that's why we had to tackle the staff shortages. As of April 16, we have a staff of 8,802 judges, and almost 2,500 vacancies. Almost a thousand are judges initially appointed for five years, whose powers expired. They are actually available for work, but according to the law they are not authorized to administer justice prior to the qualification assessment and our recommendation. This thousand people make court analytics, work in the judicial self-government bodies, the National School, but do not directly perform their function. And those judges who have remained on their positions have to cover up for this shortage of 3,500 judicial staff - their workload has increased by several times. There are courts where there are no judges at all; there are courts where one judge out of four or five remained.
There was a case in Yaremche town where, in general, no working judge remained in the court.
We dispatched Mr. Andriy Ivanov there. He is from Perevalske, Luhansk Region. We worried whether he would be able to adapt and get used to that region, but now the locals would not let him be transferred elsewhere.
Is he still the only judge there?
Yes. We cannot appoint anyone there without a competition. We need to dispatch one more person. The law allows you to dispatch a judge for six months, but not more than a year. He spent six months there, demonstrated efficiency, tackled the workload, organized repairs in the court premises. He bought the thuja trees, fruit trees, and the judicial team together planted a garden in front of the court. Incidentally, it was he who imposed administrative liability on a guy from Belarus, who was skiing in Bukovel and flashing that notorious orange-and-black ribbon around. And I did not hear anyone saying any nonsense about this court. Okay, we started talking about allegations of the Commission's improper work. During the three years since it started, did you hear about any shady money here? Did you ever hear that this Commission takes bribes?
Money matters are better solved in silence.
If we were going to take money, something would surely leak. These places attract money and there are various temptations. I think we worked efficiently in this aspect, so there are no unsubstantiated rumors. The PIC reproached us that not each and every candidate to the Supreme Court was immaculate. But this is like that “glass of water” proverb − is it half full or half empty? Our task was to quickly and efficiently create a new judicial institution and get it started. The PIC provided serious remarks, but we had to check them professionally. And where the PIC was absolutely convincing, we agreed with them. In some cases, we thought that from the point of view of legal completeness the matter did not seem exhaustive. The judge gives an explanation, confirms it with documents and says: “Esteemed Commission, I got this thing from this source, and that one from another and you cannot prove the origin of the rest”. We found out whether the proceedings were instituted against a judge, whether they had concealed a property or obtained some illegal revenues, or whether they were prosecuted. The PIC said they had doubts about the judges' integrity. But what would you do with mere doubts?
“It does not matter what kind of signature of the PIC members will be there - digital or cryptographic”.
Have you taken the PIC comments into consideration or preferred to ignore them?
I know all the figures by heart. There were 146 opinions since the PIC launch. PIC withdrew 12 of them because candidates just provided simple explanations to the PIC satisfaction. As a result, 27 people were admitted to the Supreme Court positions with these opinions, other did not qualify as sufficiently professional. We found 51 candidates with the PIC opinions as incompliant with the position, the rest did not make it to the competition shortlist. But PIC defamed people before the eyes of the whole country. Lawyers, scholars have been subjected to such ostracism, and I do not even know how they are working now.
What will happen to those judges whose file dossiers are suspended due to the PIC findings? In general, is the dialogue with the Council going now? Did they just say they stop working and withdraw?
This is an interesting question and generally an interesting situation. During the Supreme Court competition, the PIC could either agree with its outcome and provide comments on the further elimination of deficiencies, or affirm that the major reform is implemented and it's a victory, or to start screaming, “This is treason, everything is lost, and we do not trust anyone”. For some reason, they opted for the third standpoint. The court is bad, persons in it are suspicious, the Commission is unfitting ... But we openly discussed everything, we made it possible for the public to see this process. There was a space to think how we should refine some points and make them more perfect. But everything culminated with ungrounded allegations.
There were many complaints in the PIC concerning specifically Mr. Bohdan Lvov, a judge who became Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Court.
Let me remind you who Mr. Lvov is. The things in the High Commercial Court are said to be quite gloomy during the “Tatkov-Yemelianov era”. People tell frankly that there were unfair case consideration instances, and certain framed-up proceedings were arranged, and some bribes were paid. Someone even said that the “right people” were introduced there to propel corrupt interests. Maybe it's true, maybe not, but everyone has heard about it.
Then there was the question of replacing the chief judge through selection by the team. Who stood up against the then-almighty Tatkov at the elections? Mr. Lvov. Who took over the court with all its problems after Tatkov? Mr. Lvov. During those four years when he was in charge of the court, did you hear about the instances of the previous shameful practice in that court? Has it changed?
You are in a better position to assess that.
Yes, because I'm monitoring the situation. There is no such practice. Therefore, Lvov managed to make a positive contribution to the processes or not? Now the time has passed and there are talks that Lvov is not the proper person. Let's objectively evaluate the situation and judge everyone by their deeds. They said that Tatkov had organized such a format of work when no automated distribution of cases took place. They were assigned to the handpicked judges who ensured the desired outcome of the proceedings. This practice has been dismantled. Therefore, we should follow an objective evaluation approach.
When there was a competition to the Supreme Court, the PIC had a meeting, a discussion took place, and there were the minutes of the meeting, which indicated the list of attendees and the agenda, the candidates to be screened. Then there was a voting. It does not matter who voted and how, just show who participated in the voting, how many voters there were. How votes have split - how much for, and how much against? It does not matter which signature will be there, digital or cryptographic...
PIC says that one of its members lives in Sumy and cannot sign the papers at any time.
Mr. Roman Sukhostavets says that he rode in total 185 hours on a shuttle bus here and there. I say to him that I will believe, even if he makes a facsimile because he is a responsible guy. When we talk about individual members of the PIC, everything is fine, and when some collegial decisions are made, I do not fully understand everything. The question is not about the signature form, but the fact that the document they accept becomes a part of the candidate's dossier.
Let's take any voluminous dossier of a judge. Here are sections with the general information about the judge related to his career - information on participation in competitions, the completion of the National School of Judges training, qualification and judge's regular assessments, holding administrative positions in the courts, the efficiency of the judge's performance in court proceedings, case studies statistics. I would like to point out to the fact that someone did a sign and seal all those papers. Here are only approved documents, not draft ones. Why? Because if the judge disagrees with something, he has a simple and direct option to appeal directly in the Administrative Court of Cassation as the structural unit of the Supreme Court. And we will accept its decision as binding. Yesterday we decided on a judge's nonconformity with the position, which means that the judge should leave. He is already out of court system. And the second item of our decision submitted to the High Council of Justice was that this person cannot be a judge. Would this judge really like it?
Therefore, he would appeal to the court. And the court will require the grounds on which the Commission relied when making such a decision. So we recommend the PIC not just does their job, but formalizes it appropriately. This is the easiest thing in our relationships that could be done. They should make a decision and arrange the proper document to affirm it. They can choose any legal template they prefer, but we must understand that such a document has been formally issued. Then it is attached to this folder.
How does it look now?
There is PCI opinion, under which it is written – “co-coordinator of the Public Integrity Council”. And that's all. And in some cases, an extract from the minutes of the PIC meeting is attached. There's not even the name of the judge in question. And in many cases, there is no extract at all.
“If the Public Council does not want to continue tackling these things, then they may announce dissolution”
You say that a judge can sue for illegal dismissal. The PIC filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court. If the court decides that your requirements to the public were unlawful, what then?
We will comply with the court decision. This is what I am absolutely certain about.
Will it have a retroactive effect on already adopted decisions?
And now, pay attention to this point! We have not yet made any decisions related to the PIC opinions. Why do I say that we will comply with any court order? Because if, afterward, there will arise conflict situations with court consideration of claims, which I have pointed out to you, the Commission will no longer bear responsibility for that. Then I will not have to feel embarrassed that I, as a lawyer, missed some procedural matters and failed to ensure due completion of the process. Then I will have a court decision stating that these procedural issues are insignificant. So, please, Commission, you should decide it in some other format.
That is, you wash your hands of this.
Right. Then they will lay responsibility for this not on me, but on a person who took such position. This will be true if the decision is logical, consistent and compliant with the principles of the rule of law. If it is not, then we too have the right to request the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court to reconsider this matter. But in principle, we will obey the lawful decision of the court without any problems.
I would emphasize once again, that we did not take any decision related to the PIC opinions yet. I mean cases if we would just reject their conclusion and proceed. The PIC has known long ago who will be first to take the assessment – this is the so-called first thousand people. Lists of these individuals were already available sometime in late October last year. Officially, we formed it in December. Then we twice sent them letters, signed by our Chairman, which indicated the names and the sequence of people expected to undergo the assessment. We submitted the same list to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Roman Maselko, the PIC participant, is a member of the Council of Public Control at the NABU, so he could also receive information from that side. That is, these people were well-known and the composition of the first portion of candidates was clear. The PIC provided us with opinions about them, not in the form we requested, but in some random format which did not fully conform to our regulations. It’s we who organize the procedure, we provide the platform for that. And if they use our platform, they should adjust to our standards.
And in case of the Supreme Court competition, the PIC drafted their opinions according to the same procedure, or there was a completely different one?
A somewhat different one.
But you did not seem to be concerned about it then.
They used to formalize the decisions in a different manner. In addition, it was only the beginning – it’s like when the world was just created, at first there was nothing but darkness. They were trying to establish a method of working, while we saw that work is actually being done. The opinion was signed in the same manner then, but the minutes were different, the form was different, the content was different. The PIC itself and international experts had a remark to the Commission that our papers can hardly be called proper documents. We agreed that there is an opportunity to improve the procedure. And it seems to us that for the PIC it is unlikely to be complicated either. Wherever a member of our Commission is, we ensure that he or she attends the meeting and signs the decision. If it is so difficult for the PIC members, let them sign it digitally.
The existence of the PIC is envisaged in the law. You say that the Commission in principle can work without the participation of the PIC. Is any dialogue going on? Do you offer any consensus options?
The dialogue goes on. We communicate remotely. I would not like to talk about specifics now, how it’s happening, and what format we are going to work out. I emphasize only that no opinion of the PIC is ignored. Where they came up with such “crude” opinions, we announced a break in the meeting, suspended assessment of the concerned judge and asked them to finalize their opinion. They have not done anything yet.
However, breaks are announced not only in these cases. We have our own questions to other judges, against whom the PIC did not file an opinion. We announced a break upon PIC findings in 45 cases, and in general, the break was announced for 114 cases at this moment. As of last week, the Commission has recognized 17 judges as non-compliant with the judicial positions according to the interview results. Of these 17 cases, only two PIC opinions existed. That is, in two cases, the point of view of the PIC and the Commission coincided, and in 15 cases there were no comments from the PIC regarding these judges, although they monitored the entire thousand. Next, we envisaged in our Rules of Procedure (by the way, upon the proposal of European experts) that the opinion should be based on fact-checking, that the sources of information should be reliable. But I can agree that they can write what they want in the opinions, this is their right. As for the formal execution of documents, I would like the PIC to accommodate our recommendations.
And do you understand why they cannot formalize the documents properly?
The key question is whether they cannot or do not want to? If the PIC is reluctant to continue dealing with these things, then there is another way out. They can announce dissolution and allow forming another public council, in another composition.
They believe that conformists will run over their place...
Wait, do we have a monopoly right to some kind of activity here, or what? In addition, the law states: those who worked for two years in one cadence can apply the next one without any barriers. But they seem to prefer the “dog in the manger” approach. They would not work themselves but are going to stand there wielding a baton and prevent anyone else from stepping in and doing their work. The question arises again: do we already have the “right” and the “wrong” public participation? This brass rhetoric somehow coincided with the climax of discussions around the vision and the future of the Anti-Corruption Court. As a result, the Commission’s image has been tarnished, and there are claims that it should not take part in the Anti-Corruption Court formation.
There is still a long way to the Anti-Corruption Court. Even the law is not adopted yet.
I agree with you. Moreover, if someone thinks that Mr. Shchotka is daydreaming about taking part in the Anti-Corruption Court formation process, then I assure that I do not dream and do not feel too happy about it. This process is already politicized; we drift from a purely pragmatic managerial approach to this issue towards a completely different aspect. We are all real people with our dignity and emotions, and who would like their reputation to be smeared with dirt?
“The political elite ceased to influence judges”
For people who do not delve deeply into the intricacies of judicial reform, it should look like this: we remove all the former corrupt judges and recruit new honest ones. To what extent is the system upgraded now?
In 2009, I said that first and foremost we must destroy the obsolete model, cemented with shady affiliations, when the judges are closely linked, for example, with the oligarchs. We had the “Donetsk justice”, and such cliques as “Dnipropetrovsk”, “Lviv”, “Zakarpattya justice” were starting to take shape. Each oligarch engaged its own host of judges. It’s a horror. The task was to break away from this model, as far away as possible, and prevent such things from reviving later on. Thanks God, it seems this can be done. You can hardly say now that there is a separate group or clan of judges who are mercenaries of someone’s economic interests.
Those who spearheaded such things left the system. I think so, I feel so. I do not consider some unsystematic cases, like individual cases of bribery, or so forth. These phenomena are shameful but scattered, while systemic affiliation is much more terrible. Could we talk about any kind of legal certainty in these circumstances? What kind of case law could be discussed? It was never possible in the old model.
What are the preventive measures now in relation to the “oligarchization” of new judges?
The political elite has ceased to influence it. If we had in three hundred millionaires in the Parliament clustering in groups and factions, how do you think, were these the centers of leveraging the courts or not? And now the things are different. People say that the President allegedly tries to make everything dance to his tune. No, he does not.
Nevertheless, there are rumors that the Bankova Street office has a good deal of influence over Mr. Benedysiuk, the Chairman of the HCJ.
I do not believe it. The judicial corps is not determined exclusively by the way the High Council of Justice or the High Qualification Commission of Judges behaves. It lives its own life. Thousands of cases are considered daily throughout the country. Do you think that the understaffed High Council of Justice is able to have total control over all affairs, and so on? Someone will say, “C’mon, give us a break, don’t we know how these things are arranged”. I do not affirm that the political and oligarchic influence is eliminated, but these are minimized. Previously, people pursuing their interests not only tried to influence the judicial system and individual judges but instead they just forthright introduced in the system their cronies from the outside, who were already prepared to “work for a team” from the very first day. They fostered these people, formed a “proxy” judiciary corps. This system had to be destroyed and somehow by a miracle, we managed to do it because the institutions and legislation were changed. Now there are no former higher courts, there is no former Supreme Court, those who were not ready for serious monitoring and public appraisal agreed to resign with financial support.
What, by the way, is the amount of this support?
It depends on the length of service, the level of the court. But I think that somewhere about UAH 20 thousand.
Is it a lifetime allowance?
Yes. I am a judge of the Supreme Court of Ukraine in retirement and I receive lifetime allowance on a monthly basis − about UAH 21 thousand.
Is this in addition to the Commission’s salary?
Yes. The law envisages that I can obtain both. Hence, 2.5 thousand judges left, and others are following. It’s a considerable drain. And if you look at who has retired, you will see a lot of those who used to have certain power until recently.
Such a well-known judge as Rodion Kireyev, who condemned Tymoshenko, and then fled to Russia, also gets an allowance?
He does not receive anything. God forbid! There is a criminal proceeding still underway. None of such judges received anything from the state. But let’s return to the guarantees that no relapse to the past will happen anymore. Of course, I am not omniscient and I cannot surely tell that the processes will never turn towards the previous model. Anything may happen, but we made every effort to change the model of the judiciary corps formation, the requirements to judges, and to eliminate centers of influence on judges. This influence may be mediated, but certainly is not straightforward. Now the judicial selection is a multilevel, transparent process. Very serious attention is paid to monitoring. Previously, there was no NABU, NAAU, and information about a candidate or a judge was unavailable. The public did not know what property they own, what is their lifestyle, how many times they traveled abroad and where – no one knew it. Now all this is a part of the formal scrutiny.
How often do judges need to take these examinations with your office?
A unique decision was made to screen the whole judiciary corps – in essence; it is the verification of judges’ compliance with their positions. It is like if we said that the journalists were worse than the judges before, and since the reform, all journalists must be re-certified right now. And if a certain journalist Petrenko or Sokolenko does not make it through the check, they will be banned from the profession forever. The screening authority would look what they wrote, how did they write, whether they know where to put commas, where did they go, what god they worship, what they do for a living, whether they paid taxes ... it would be a good deal of stress for the subject.
Nowhere in the world, was the decision made to check all judges at the same time on such a scale. There are such things in Europe but within the framework of a regular professional assessment. And we implemented shock checks and thorough filtering of the entire judicial staff.
That is, it will be a one-time check?
This procedure is one-time and it is prescribed by the Constitution. Those who failed to prove their professional compliance are subject to dismissal without compromises. Next, the law will envisage the judges’ assessment on a regular basis. The National School of Judges will conduct it. Judges will come there and undergo training. For the future, such things as public control or public monitoring are envisaged. Public organizations will be able to attend court hearings, gauge public opinion, submit their documents for regular assessment of judges. That is, it will no longer be solely the Commission’s task.
“New salary of judges starts from UAH 35 thousand”
In what categories can you divide the people who are currently applying to judicial positions?
Half of those over 4,000 are assistants of judges. They work in close contact with the judge, in the court itself. They know the judicial work, they like it, they are familiar with the context, but they do not perform a judicial function, only a supporting one. Some of them will be judges, and some will never take judicial positions. Another category is people from legal professions. They work as legal advisers at businesses, government officials, prosecutors, court attorneys and other lawyers. There are also legal scholars.
What is their motivation?
I have seen many of these young people, listened to their conversations in various court forums, roundtables or conferences. No matter how naive it sounds, nevertheless these are people who want to join the judiciary out of dedication. The work is not easy, but interesting, it stimulates development, professional improvement. It was previously thought that in court you will be a servant to someone’s interests and you will follow the instructions of a local tycoon, you will work under pressure, influence, and intimidation. Now, these things are slowly wearing off. Plus, the state has set up a decent remuneration for judges. Certainly, people make bigger money elsewhere, but there are other conditions – for example, greater risk. And here, nevertheless, one can be a part of the state function, a balanced organism. It is possible to live and work with self-respect, to feel some respect from people.
What is the judicial salary now?
If we are talking about a new salary, then this is from UAH 35 thousand in a local court and up to UAH 220 thousand in the Supreme Court. These are average figures because some receive bonuses for the length of service years, experience or academic degrees. This remuneration is quite decent; it is comparable to the remuneration of European countries. Of course, this is not on the same level as judicial salary in Britain, where it is several times higher. But this is not, say, Mongolia or Russia either. I find this remuneration package fully acceptable.
What is the percentage of rejections among the assessed judicial candidates? And what are the main reasons?
Well, for example, we considered 60 judges in four boards in one day. Two of them were dismissed for nonconformance – it is conditionally 3%. Is it a real reform? This matter is quite two-sided. We need 8 thousand judges to ensure proper staffing of courts. And as I already said, 2.5 thousand judges left the system. Do they just wanted to retire or were not sure that they would be able to work under the new conditions?
That is, you count them as lost for further judicial employment?
Yeah. Those PIC guys now say that there were also some good judges among the retired ones. I agree with them. But I ask – why did the good ones leave? Isn’t it because we have stirred the situation up and threatened to unleash mass punishments? We are perceived as some single group, and regardless of whether you are good or not, they’ll bash you just because you were a judge. Someone just decided to be on the safe side. But these are not so numerous. We will never know whether a judge retired because of professional nonconformance or because they just wanted to stay out of trouble.
Pavlo Vuyets
Glavkom
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