28 September 2021, Tuesday, 12:29 120

Yuliya Lovochkina: Ukraine Has Failed to Nominate the ECHR Judge for Two Years Now

Автор тексту: Oleksandr Mazur

Редактор: Яків Сташинський

Yuliya Lovochkina. Photo by zagittya.com.ua

Instead of following the standards and criteria of the Council of Europe and electing its European Court of Human Rights judge during the autumn session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Ukraine has taken a different path. This resulted in the fact that Ukraine has failed to duly nominate its ECHR judge for two years now. Last week’s attempt of the Ukrainian delegation’s majority to challenge the decision by the PACE Committee on the Election of Judges to the European Court of Human Rights is yet another wrong step.

This was stated by a member of the Ukrainian PACE delegation, Opposition Platform - For Life MP Yuliya Lovochkina in a commentary on the discussion of the issue within the PACE agenda.

In April 2019, the tenure of Ukrainian ECHR Judge Hanna Yudkivska ended. To replace its judge on time, Ukraine was supposed to propose three candidates for the position, in line with the Assembly’s standards and criteria, back in December 2018. However, the new judge was not elected during the September session, and Ms. Yudkivska’s tenure is prolonged yet another time.

Lovochkina reminded that in May 2021, Ukraine sent the list of three nominated candidates for the ECHR Judge position. The Committee on the Election of Judges held interviews with the candidates on September 16 and decided to recommend the Assembly to dismiss the list by the Ukrainian Side for some of its candidates who fail to meet the criteria for ECHRo Judges and to ask the Ukrainian government to provide a new list.

"At today’s plenary session of the Assembly, the Ukrainian delegation attempted to challenge the ruling by the Committee on the Election of Judges regarding Ukrainian candidates, but to no avail. I’d like to stress that Ukraine was allowed enough time to change the list. However, it deliberately chose a different tactic: a challenge for the sake of dispute. The Assembly’s decision to stick to the relevant Committee’s ruling was expected, and this means Ukraine will have to file a new list anyway, and the time was lost yet again", - Lovochkina said last week.

As reported, the autumn session of PACE took place between September 27 and 30, 2021 in a hybrid format, with some of the delegates being present in Strasbourg, and others participating online.

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