EU requirements are back: how Ukraine will have to change the HQCJ selection process after the Venice Commission's opinion

In June 2027, the terms of almost all members of the High Qualification Commission of Judges (HQCJ) will expire. By then, the state must select new members of the body that evaluates judges and selects candidates for judicial positions. 

But right now, this simply cannot be done. It is already late September 2026, and Ukraine still has no law under which the selection could begin.

Without a new HQCJ composition, the entire judicial reform could come to a standstill, stalling Ukraine’s EU accession process, in which the justice sector is a priority. 

Yet for the EU, what matters is not the title of the law but its content.

On 25 September, the Venice Commission, together with the Council of Europe's Directorate General of Human Rights and the Rule of Law, published an urgent opinion on government draft law No. 16018-1 on the selection of members of the HQCJ and the High Council of Justice (HCJ). The key message is simple: the return of international experts to the selection process is welcome, but in its current form, the draft law turns it into a mere formality.

According to the Commission, the government’s version "would preserve the form but not the substance" of what Ukraine’s European integration commitments entail.

This means the draft law needs substantial revision. Now it is up to the government and the Verkhovna Rada to do this honestly and on time.

How Ukraine wasted a year

On 1 June 2025, the term of the first Selection Commission, which selected HQCJ members, came to an end. It consisted of six members: three judges or retired judges delegated by the Council of Judges and three experts nominated by international organisations. In 2023, this mechanism helped to form the sitting HQCJ.

Under current legislation, future compositions will be formed exclusively by national bodies, without international experts. But the question is whether they can select new HQCJ members fairly, or whether they will drag the entire judicial reform back to corporatism and the protection of "their own", just like previous HQCJ compositions.  

Back on 18 June 2025, Anastasiia Radina, Chair of the Verkhovna Rada's Anti-Corruption Committee, together with other MPs, registered draft law No. 13382, which would extend the participation of international experts in the HQCJ selection process. Nearly 90 civil society organisations called for keeping international experts on the selection commissions. Yet the Verkhovna Rada never considered the draft law. 

In December 2025, the European Union included the return of international experts to the HQCJ selection process in the list of 10 priority reforms, also known as the Kachka–Kos plan.

Seven months passed, and absolutely nothing changed.

To give the reform an additional push, this summer the EU also included it in the Ukraine Facility plan. Adopting a law that brings international experts back into the HQCJ selection process became a financial indicator worth around €130 million. 

Only on 10 July 2026 did then-Deputy Prime Minister Taras Kachka send the government's draft law to the Venice Commission, without first showing it to the public or MPs. In fact, it was an attempt to bypass public discussion and come to parliament with a text supposedly already "agreed upon with Europe" – and therefore not open to fundamental changes. 

But the plan failed. 

The Venice Commission explicitly stated that the legislative process does not "adhere to good lawmaking standards" and that urgency does not negate the obligation to conduct consultations, particularly with civil society.

What the Venice Commission concluded

Let’s start with the good news.

The Commission supported a key element of the draft law: entrusting the 2027 renewal of the High Qualification Commission of Judges (HQCJ) to a selection commission, which must again include international members. The Venice Commission once again emphasised that involving international experts in this way does not infringe on national sovereignty and that all necessary safeguards are already provided for in Ukrainian legislation.

Most importantly, however, the Venice Commission explained that the temporary character of international participation is defined by "the task for which it was established and not by a fixed date".

In other words, the expiry of the statutory term is not, in itself, a reason to exclude international experts. First, Ukraine must carry out proper reform of the national bodies that will later take over the selection of HQCJ members, and only then return to the standard procedure without international participation. 

At the same time, the Venice Commission notes that the current draft law requires substantial revision. 

Key concerns:

• The provision requiring the commission to include at least one Ukrainian citizen under the international partners’ quota weakens the mechanism. The inclusion of Ukrainian citizens should be an option for international organisations, not a requirement. 

• The same voting rules should apply to all decisions concerning candidates, securing the role of the international members. The Venice Commission proposes that decisions on integrity, competence, and the final list require 4 votes, including at least 2 from international members. 

• The provision allowing Ukrainian bodies to replace international members must be removed. This is indeed a rather peculiar provision: if partners do not nominate candidates to the commission, the quota may be filled instead by the Council of Prosecutors, the Bar Council, and the National Academy of Legal Sciences – unreformed Ukrainian bodies that lack the trust of both the public and international partners. The Venice Commission considers this unacceptable and proposes that, should such a situation arise, the nomination period for international organisations be extended or, as a last resort, that the right to nominate be transferred to a neutral body, though it does not specify which one.

• The selection commission should operate not for a fixed two-year term, but until it fulfils its task (forming the new HQCJ). This would serve as a safeguard against a situation in which Ukraine once again finds itself without a functioning selection commission and unprepared to form the HQCJ on its own. At the same time, the selection process must be announced at least six months before the end of the term, while sitting HQCJ members should remain in office until their successors are appointed. 

• Another issue is the selection commission’s dependence on the HCJ Secretariat. The government proposes that the Secretariat support the commission’s work, while international members would, in fact, be allowed to engage only interpreters, without the assistants who previously helped collect and analyse information about candidates. The Venice Commission stresses that candidates’ integrity cannot be properly assessed without independent analytical capacity. The commission therefore needs analytical support accountable only to it, while the HCJ Secretariat should provide only technical and logistical assistance.

The Venice Commission’s conclusion should be quoted almost word for word.

The Venice Commission believes that each of these changes, taken separately, "reduces one of the safeguards of the mechanism which produced the HQCJ in 2023." Taken together, all these provisions would "shift control over the procedure towards the appointing authority (the HCJ – ed.)", reducing the participation of international experts to a purely nominal role.

"Box-ticking" or reform?

The Ukrainian authorities are becoming increasingly adept at reporting on reforms, while at the same time trying to undermine their essence and retain leverage over appointments to key judicial governance bodies.

The government’s draft law clearly illustrates this approach: international experts are nominally present, but the selection process is controlled.

The Venice Commission explicitly states that Kyiv is trying to "sell" form without substance.

After all, the goal of the reform is not simply to have international experts at the table. The goal is to ensure that independent HQCJ members are selected on the basis of genuine criteria of integrity and professionalism, without external interference.

Now the Verkhovna Rada has two options. The first is to ignore the substantive criticism and rush the text through almost unchanged, claiming there is "no time to waste" because the country needs the money tied to the Ukraine Facility indicator. Ukraine would get HQCJ built for hand-picking judges, and a failed benchmark in its EU accession talks.

The second is to openly work through the Venice Commission's recommendations with civil society and international partners, and then either submit a new draft law or adopt the necessary amendments to those already registered. That is harder, of course, but only then will the return of international experts make sense.

Manual control over judges and the bodies that select and dismiss them is a relic incompatible with EU membership. Those who cling to old schemes are doomed to fail.

The only question is how much time Ukraine will lose before that happens, and whether the delay will cost us progress towards our long-awaited EU accession.

Tetiana Shevchuk, lawyer at NGO Anti-Corruption Action Centre

Karyna Penska, advocacy manager at the DEJURE Foundation

Kateryna Butko, Head of All-Ukrainian Association "Automaidan"