How Ukrainian parliament misled EU on improving judicial oversight and what the consequences may be

On 9 June 2026, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada [Ukrainian parliament] adopted Draft Law No. 13165-2 on improving judges' integrity declarations and declarations of judges' family ties.

Under the Ukraine Facility Plan, the Verkhovna Rada was supposed to adopt, by mid-2025, legislation improving judges’ integrity declarations and the procedures for verifying them. The reform was expected to introduce clearer declaration requirements, extend the verification period, establish more detailed procedures, and provide for clear legal consequences.

The reason lawmakers ultimately acted is well known: nearly €400 million in funding is linked to improving the system for verifying judges. Moreover, European Commissioner Marta Kos, who visited Kyiv shortly beforehand, specifically urged Parliament not to jeopardise these funds and to finally take this step.

Read more about how parliament, under the guise of a European integration law, adopted legislation that actually moves Ukraine further away from the EU, democracy and the rule of law in the article by Mykhailo Zhernakov and Tetiana Shevchuk: A "European" reform in name only: How EU concessions underme the chance to clean up the Supreme Court. 

Every year since 2016, judges have been required to submit an integrity declaration. This is a special questionnaire in which a judge confirms, among other things, that they live within their lawful means, have not issued decisions in situations involving a conflict of interest, and have not attempted to obtain Russian citizenship.

If any of these statements are found to be false during the verification process, the judge is supposed to be held accountable – although, as discussed later in this article, the sanctions currently provided by law are far from severe.

In fact, over the past ten years, no judge has been punished for providing false information in an integrity declaration.

The loophole that allows judges lacking integrity to avoid accountability is embedded in the law itself. Liability exists only for the intentional submission of false information. In legal practice, however, proving intent, as opposed to a mistake, oversight, or forgetfulness, is nearly impossible. Even in the rare cases where intent was established, the penalties imposed amounted to little more than a warning or the loss of bonus payments for a month – hardly a meaningful incentive to change behaviour.

This is precisely why the demand emerged to "fix" the integrity declaration mechanism.

To make it effective, the law should establish liability for gross negligence when completing declarations, extend the maximum verification period to allow all relevant circumstances to be examined, and strengthen sanctions so that dismissal of a judge becomes a realistic outcome.

And one more element is critically important under current circumstances: international experts should be temporarily involved in the review of judges serving on the highest court, namely the Supreme Court.

All of these requirements are reflected in the Ukraine Facility Plan, the Rule of Law Roadmap, the Kachka–Kos list of priority reforms for 2026, and the accession negotiation benchmarks under Chapter 23.

Yet instead of improving the mechanism, Members of Parliament voted to remove roughly half of the declaration requirements and render verification of the remaining provisions largely meaningless.

This is not the first time that Ukrainian authorities have committed themselves to a reform only to exploit ambiguities in the requirements or other circumstances in order to replace genuine reform with imitation.

But this represents a new level of falsification of a supposedly "European" law.

Lawmakers ignored the fairly detailed requirements set out by the EU and adopted legislation that directly contradicts its title and produces the opposite effect.

The legislation can be revised and brought into line with the objectives for which it was originally created. Likewise, approaches to assessing Ukraine’s compliance with its rule-of-law commitments should be reconsidered when the authorities offer an imitation of reform instead of the real thing.

This is not a choice between supporting Ukraine and criticising it.

It is a choice between supporting genuine reform and accepting its imitation.