Generous marks, unfinished homework: What Brussels saw and missed in Ukraine's justice reform

In its annual Enlargement Package, the European Commission rewarded Ukraine’s progress with generous marks: its scores rose by a record 4.5 points across 33 chapters. Read the report closely, however, and the picture is gloomier.

Brussels has diagnosed a number of problems in Ukraine’s judiciary – notably the need to keep international experts involved in selecting members of several judicial bodies. It also has concerns about the reform of legal education.

On some issues, though, the Commission could have been more demanding: the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, the Bar and judges’ integrity declarations. Sooner or later, insufficient progress in these areas will become an obstacle on Ukraine’s path to the EU.

As early as the first half of 2027, the Commission is due to prepare its Interim Benchmark Assessment Report (IBAR) on the benchmarks set for the first negotiating cluster, including the rule of law.

The leniency in this year’s report may be meant to motivate Kyiv to meet these benchmarks properly and quickly. But the praise may well have the opposite effect.

Points of agreement with Brussels

The pace of judicial reform was downgraded from "some progress" to "limited progress". European Commission highlights that the ten priority reforms, as agreed with the Ukrainian authorities on 10 December 2025 – the Kachka-Kos plan – "remain mostly outstanding", and the slowing down of legislative decision-making is a point of concern.

Where progress was made, as in the fight against corruption, it came mostly because the anti-corruption institutions kept delivering, backed by "an exceptionally active civil society".

The marks reward what Ukraine's institutions and society have built during the full-scale invasion and, at the same time, the text shows how little its politicians delivered this year.

The clearest message concerns internationally nominated experts.

The Commission warns that the premature termination of the role of independent experts "before national appointing bodies are fully reformed risks undermining judicial reform," calling on Ukraine to urgently extend their participation in selecting members of the High Qualification Commission of Judges (HQCJ) in line with the Ukraine Plan – and, new this year, of the High Council of Justice (HCJ), whose Ethics Council loses its international members in November 2027.

This is exactly what civil society organisations have consistently advocated and called for in an independent Shadow report for 2026.

The Commission report also shows why the vote of international experts matters. In December 2025, the appointment of the new head of the State Judicial Administration (SJA) "did not comply with the competitive, merit and integrity-based selection procedure, contrary to Ukraine's specific commitments in its Rule of Law Roadmap".

What the report does not spell out is that the members of the selection commission delegated by international partners all opposed the winning candidate, but their votes were only advisory, so the HCJ simply disregarded them.

That candidate, Maksym Pampura, appeared in the High Anti-Corruption Court’s verdict against his former boss, ex-SJA head Oleksii Salnikov, as the witness who, according to the prosecution, went at Salnikov’s request to negotiate a "desired" ruling with Supreme Court judges.

This did not stop the HCJ from putting him in charge of an institution that manages over €300 million a year.

The lesson is plain. Without a decisive vote, international experts are a facade for a competition that merely looks transparent – and the Commission has refused to count that facade as meeting Ukraine's commitments. Kyiv should expect the same verdict on any reform of the HQCJ, the HCJ or the Supreme Court that keeps the experts but strips them of their crucial role.

Yet that is where things are currently heading: the Venice Commission warned that the government's draft would preserve the form but not the substance of Ukraine's commitments, and the parliamentary committee then backed an even weaker text, draft law No. 16018. This draft law hasn’t been adopted by the Parliament yet.

Brussels should say plainly that such a law will not meet the Ukraine Plan indicator, worth around €130 million.

The Commission is equally right that the law still allows judges subject to disciplinary proceedings to resign before the HCJ rules on their dismissal – a loophole that draft law No. 15374 would close.

Brussels is also right on legal education. This time it explicitly calls for new legislation to tackle the uneven quality of legal education, and to separate legal education from law-enforcement training.

That means, first of all, a law on legal education and initial access to the legal profession. Its concept was endorsed by the parliamentary committee back in 2025, and the Rule of Law Roadmap scheduled its adoption for the first quarter of 2026.

The draft law has not even been introduced in the Verkhovna Rada. The Commission also wants the Unified State Qualification Exam extended to all law graduates, yet students at institutions with "specific learning conditions", such as law-enforcement academies, may still skip it until 1 September 2027.

Where Brussels could go further

On the Constitutional Court, the Commission again asks Ukraine to fill the remaining and upcoming vacancies, but, for some reason, drops last year's "without further delays" – although the risk has grown. Five of 18 seats are empty, 12 judges are needed for a quorum, and two more terms end by March 2027. A reserve of vetted candidates by the Advisory Group of Experts and firm deadlines for Parliament and the President to appoint the vetted candidates would make deliberate blocking impossible, but the report asks for neither.

On the Supreme Court, it calls again, almost word for word as last year, for strengthening nomination and integrity procedures and the temporary and meaningful involvement of independent experts nominated by international partners – with no model and no deadline. What should "meaningful" look like? The word "meaningful" itself leaves enough room for manipulation and creative readings.

The only safeguard that works is a casting vote for international experts: a commission of three international and three Ukrainian experts checks every candidate’s integrity, and no one passes without the support of at least two international members. Failing that check rules a candidate out, however strong their professional results, while a proven record of integrity counts in their favour.

The sequence matters too: first the new procedure in law, then the competition. A selection run under the current rules would fill the court with the old problems for decades.

The Bar is a similar story. In 2026, there was no real progress: the Ministry of Justice set up a working group in January, but there is still no draft law, and Ukraine risks missing the end-2026 deadline set by the Rule of Law Roadmap. Unlike last year, when the Bar got only a passing mention, the Commission now spells out what reform of the legal profession should involve: modernising governance, improving access, raising qualification and admission standards, and strengthening disciplinary and financial accountability.

It also warns that disciplinary proceedings by the Ukrainian National Bar Association (UNBA) and regional bar associations against lawyers, including members of the HCJ and the HQCJ, "could undermine the independence of the legal profession and judicial governance bodies".

All correct. But bodies whose mandates expired in 2022 will not reform themselves, and new elections alone will not change much. Candidates for the UNBA’s governing bodies need integrity checks involving independent international experts, the bar exam should be digitalised and unified to break up corruption schemes, and the Bar’s finances need an independent audit.

The loudest silence of the European Commission concerns judges' integrity declarations.

In 2025, Brussels asked Ukraine to "adopt legislation to improve judges' declarations of integrity and their verification". In June, Parliament adopted Law No. 4905-IX, which does the opposite – it removes the section in which judges confirm that their lifestyle matches their income, makes liability conditional on proving intent, and lets unfinished checks lapse after six months.

This is a clear rollback of the reform. However, the report does not call it that: it notes only that the law "entered into force in June" – while in September the Council counted it as a fulfilled Ukraine Plan requirement and approved €386.3 million tied to this very law. In the SJA case, Brussels called a facade a facade.

However, on declarations, it did not. Instead, it paid for a rollback – and a rollback that is rewarded invites the next one.

Nor does the report mention Supreme Court rulings reinstating judges dismissed over integrity – although last year it flagged decisions criticised by civil society for potentially undermining judicial reforms.

The question of method

One dissonance the report cannot hide: by the Commission's own account, reform slowed this year, yet Ukraine received its largest score increase. The marks largely reward foundations laid years ago – the Commission justifies the anti-corruption upgrade by "cumulative improvements in institutional capacity … over recent years".

We have seen this before. In 2024 and 2025, Brussels found progress where Kyiv had delivered little.

That leniency did not buy reform, but, on the contrary, it emboldened those who in July 2025 tried to strip NABU and SAPO of their independence –

an assault the EU then had to push to reverse, together with Ukrainian civil society and thousands of protesters. Now, after one of the most stagnant years for rule-of-law reform in a long time, Ukraine is offered a fast track: a positive IBAR in the first half of 2027 and chapters closed within the year.

Brussels got the substance right, but the method is another matter. We want to make it clear – we are indeed grateful for the EU's wish to help, but a method that has failed two years in a row is unlikely to work a third time.

How Ukraine intends to qualify for an IBAR so soon, with the Kachka–Kos plan still "mostly outstanding", remains to be seen.

Toloka, not decoupling

While Kyiv debates, Chișinău moves. Moldova is preparing to request its IBAR, and its roadmap foresees closing 25 chapters in 2027. Ukraine, in turn, can no longer refer to Hungary's veto as an obstacle to progress: closing chapters depends on reforms only Kyiv can deliver.

The Membership Check coalition scored implementation of the Kachka–Kos plan at 15 out of 100 in June.

Deputy Prime Minister Vsevolod Chentsov insists there is no race with Moldova. However, we should acknowledge that Moldova is ahead. The reason is that in some key reforms Ukraine is not just standing still but rolling back – and that backsliding will only become entrenched if international experts lose their decisive vote, the very mechanism that has made judicial reform work, from the High Anti-Corruption Court to the renewed HCJ and HQCJ.

This is why his case for moving towards equal voting weight for Ukrainian and international members of selection commissions runs into the SJA lesson: where decisions need four votes out of six, "equal weight" lets three delegates of the unreformed Council of Judges block anyone.

Some member states are reportedly ready to slow down Moldova's IBAR to let Ukraine catch up. That solidarity cannot last: holding back the front-runner contradicts the merit principle. Unless Kyiv legislates now, decoupling is close to inevitable. 

In September, Commissioner Marta Kos called for a toloka of reforms that would unlock an additional €2.9 billion. With Ukraine's financing needs for 2027 far from covered, every missed indicator is a self-inflicted loss.

A window wide open – for now

The good news is that the window of opportunity is currently wide open.

Brussels clearly wants Ukraine to move fast. But the window will not stay open forever.

Every member state must ratify Ukraine’s accession, and in France an accession treaty goes to a referendum unless both houses of Parliament, each by a three-fifths majority, vote to bypass it.

France elects a president in spring 2027, and the National Rally leads the polls. Marine Le Pen opposes Ukraine's EU membership, and her party's MEPs have cited corruption and the rule of law against accelerating it.

In Germany, the AfD won 43.8% in Saxony-Anhalt in September and now leads national polls. It will only press harder for power and influence. Such forces need not invent arguments: every failed reform or corruption scandal hands them one – and Russian propaganda will make sure to amplify each.

The agenda is short. By the end of 2026, Parliament should restore international experts with a decisive vote to the HQCJ Selection Commission, extend the Ethics Council's international mandate and appoint Constitutional Court judges from the already vetted lists.

The first half of 2027 should bring the reform of the competition for the Supreme Court and an end to the retirement loophole to avoid disciplinary accountability. Brussels has written an accurate diagnosis, and the cure is Kyiv's to deliver.

Mykhailo Zhernakov, Executive Director, DEJURE Foundation

Anastasiia Kokalko, Communications Manager, DEJURE Foundation