What's wrong with Ukraine's judiciary and the European Commission's assessment?
In its annual Enlargement Package, 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.
Read mpre about the pace of judicial reform, where and why the EU should be more demanding of Ukraine in the article by Mykhailo Zhernakov and Anastasiia Kokalko of the DEJURE Foundation: Generous marks, unfinished homework: What Brussels saw and missed in Ukraine's justice reform.
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 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.
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.