On October 30, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted in the first reading the draft law abolishing the institution of the consultation room in courts. This step is explained by the insufficient number of properly equipped consultation rooms in the courts.
Bill No. 9445 was supported by 242 deputies. According to it, the provisions on the conference room will be removed from the Civil Procedure Code (CPC), the Commercial Procedure Code (CPC) and the Code of Administrative Procedure (CPC), and decision-making will be formalized as a separate stage of the judicial process.
As Denis Maslov, head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Legal Policy, reported, this draft law was developed with the involvement of representatives of the judiciary. Next is the second reading and consideration of similar changes to the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC).
The project provides for:
- after the end of the court debates, the court will announce the transition to the decision-making stage with an indication of the time of its announcement in the same court session;
- in exceptional cases, the adoption and announcement of the decision may be delayed for no more than ten days;
- replacing the concept of “deliberation room secrecy” with “judgment secrecy”, which will prohibit the judge from discussing the case with third parties during the decision-making process, with the exception of other members of the court.
In addition, decisions that do not require a separate document will be entered into the minutes of the court session, and if necessary, will be drawn up separately after the session is over. The project also provides for new rules for drawing up decisions in absentia: they will contain only introductory and resolutive parts, and the court will prepare a full decision only at the request of an interested party.
According to the authors of the draft law, the institution of the consultation room has become an excessive formality that does not contribute to the effectiveness of the judicial process. Therefore, the proposed changes are designed to increase the efficiency of justice and reduce time and resource costs for court procedures.
