Ukraine court postpones controversial hearing on lustration law

Parliamentary Head of Ukraine Andriy Parubiy met with Constitutional Court Head Yuriy Baulin on June 10 to discuss the court’s reported plans to overturn several key clauses in a 2014 law on cleansing government, reported the pravda.com.ua news site on June 13. The meeting was confirmed by Parubiy’s press secretary. The same site reported afterwards that the court postponed its planned closed hearing to June 16, citing anonymous sources. A conflict emerged among the judges regarding their plans being leaked to the press, the report said. Three of the ten judges refused to support the decision, including Baulin.

Zenon Zawada: It’s positive to see a leading state official such as Parubiy take active steps to pre-empt a political scandal from erupting rather than sitting on his hands, which has been too often the case in Ukrainian politics. Steps to undermine the lustration law – which removed hundreds of key officials of the Yanukovych administration – would have been Ukraine’s latest public relations black eye. Any changes to the law will have to be justified by conforming it to the Council of Europe’s recommendations. Yet equally harsh measures would need to be adopted to address those nuances, unique to a post-Soviet country like Ukraine, which the European legal experience doesn’t account for.