“What steps will you as minister of justice take first in order to, say, reform this country’s judiciary? As we know, the so-called little judicial reform has already been carried out. Are you going to launch a big judicial reform?”
“The little judicial reform has only displayed the outward signs of the matter. Yes, now we have appellate courts and no longer have cases dismissed by a public prosecutor rather than a judge. But these ideas have not yet materialized in a mechanism to defend the interests of natural persons and corporate entities. Just renaming regional courts appellate ones does not yet ensure a full-fledged appeal procedure. This occurs today for many reasons, first of all because of the rather simplistic process of hearing cases. Viewing this problem from the angle of random statistics, we can see that in most cases except for rare exceptions an appellate court does not fully conduct the prescribed hearing procedure. But whether this is possible at all given such a large number of appeals is a different question.
“It is too early to say the little judicial reform is over. It is time to start building new elements, which in turn need the proper legal, logistical, and financial support. Only then should we revise the existing system. So today there are more unsolved than solved problems in this matter.”
“What is now the most burning problem for the new minister of justice?”
“All those interested in the law know that Ukraine has problems with the carrying out of court orders. So the Ministry of Justice believes that carrying out sentences and fulfilling court decisions made in the name of Ukraine will be one of its top priorities.
“Besides, we still apply, in our eleventh year of independence, provisions of the Ukrainian SSR Civil Code. I once opposed adoption of the Criminal Code before the Civil one, for the latter must be passed first because it sets the rules and the former sets the degree of responsibility for violation of these rules. As is known, the Civil Code became the subject of not only a political but also a professional compromise, which forced the president to exercise his veto. What the Ministry of Justice must do now is draw up an improved version of the new Civil Code, making maximum use of the president’s suggestions, as well as find a common language with the parliamentary fractions.”
“Now about the ministry’s role in promoting Ukraine’s integration in the EU and the WTO: what will be the next steps to bring Ukrainian law into line with the law of these structures? What is slowing this process down?”
“The greatest obstacle is of a purely technical nature, namely, thousands of normative instruments that govern the exercise of the rights and national interests of every European Union member. To bring our laws into conformity, we have to have adequate translation capabilities. Unfortunately, Ukraine, in contrast to other countries, displays a poorer command of the main European languages. And before making a decision, one must first of all know what it will correspond to. To this end, we have the European Legal Translation Center and the Comparative Law Center, which help to a certain extent to solve this problem. But this is just a tiny fraction of what can be done. Very much should be done by the Ministry of the Economy, for a huge number of issues are of an economic nature.
“Yet, the first and foremost problem is the World Trade Organization. I think the question here is more of an economic than legal nature, for it is connected with the interests of each of the countries. This problem is now being solved on a bilateral basis with many countries, each of which is weighing the consequences of WTO membership. The question is mostly about customs interests, market saturation, and antidumping proceedings. With this in mind and pursuing their own interests, all the prospective WTO members are cautious about the expansion of this organization. As to Ukraine, it has been taking, to put it mildly, not very rapid steps for a number of reasons.”
“We would like to know about the further destiny of the notorious Ukrspetsiust state enterprise, for the solution of this enterprise’s problems is an integral part of the judicial attempts to improve protection of the rights of the owner and the investor as well as to forestall illegal privatization.”
“In practice, one can impart a scandalous flavor to anything even if there are no facts. Ukrspetsiust is a state-run enterprise founded by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. Its function is to foster the compulsory execution of court orders resulting from state suits, about selling the property seized when a dispute was being settled in court. After selling this property, the enterprise is to remit the funds obtained to the state court order fulfillment service. Today, the need for such a firm is highly questionable. These doubts become still more serious when this firm’s property-selling functions are performed by private real estate companies. But, to claim this, one must clearly foresee the consequences that could arise if the Ukrainian model of court ordered property sales falls completely hostage to a market mechanism, given the absence of completely market-oriented rules of behavior. It is a rhetorical question where this might lead. I think these factors were taken into account during the Cabinet scandal. It was decided after the first emotional discussion of the issue that it was not necessary to liquidate this state enterprise. What is needed is to put things in order. Who can guarantee today that similar, or even more serious, claims will not be raised against private realty companies?”
“Could you comment on the claims of various experts that your appointment as minister of justice is connected with your Our Ukraine membership?”
“All I can say is that I was appointed by the president of Ukraine on the prime minister’s recommendation. You’d better ask the president and the prime minister about why they did so. When this came up, the president invited me to his office and told me about this decision. I cannot know why in fact this decision was made just now and not earlier or later.”
“Then what is your vision of relations between the Ministry of Justice and various political forces, including the Our Ukraine bloc?”
“There are different levels of entities. For instance, there are political (parties and blocs) and bodies of public administration. Although the former undoubtedly affect the formation of the latter, it is not quite correct, to put it mildly, to say there is a relationship between them. Interaction between the Ministry of Justice and a political party is possible only when the ministry registers a political entity. But, otherwise, these are totally different entities which can never cooperate or have any contractual relations. All we can speak of is representation, which is in fact determined by the level of public support during an election campaign.”
