Ukrainian parliament passes EU-linked prosecution reform bill slammed by anti-graft experts

Detailed summary

Anti-corruption activists and legal experts have lambasted the recent prosecution reform bill because it does not envisage the participation of any independent or international experts. Prosecutors will dominate in all the bodies supposed to reform the prosecution service.

The Ukrainian parliament on Nov. 11 passed the first reading of a prosecution reform bill that has been lambasted by anti-corruption watchdogs as an imitation and sabotage.

To become law, the bill needs to be passed by parliament in the second reading and signed by the president.

The bill is seen as a response by the Ukrainian authorities to a sweeping investigation by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), known as Operation Carthage, into scam call centers, drug trafficking, counterfeit currency and violence. The probe led to the ouster of Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko, who fled Ukraine in September, and implicated senior officials in his office.

Members of the criminal group bribed prosecutors, police officers and Security Service officials, according to the NABU.

The Kyiv Independent has requested comments from parliament’s law enforcement committee, the Cabinet, and the President’s Office and will publish their responses once they are received.

The bill seeks to re-introduce competitive selection procedures for top prosecutorial jobs, except for the prosecutor general. The re-introduction of contests for prosecution jobs is a requirement of the European Union as part of Ukraine's talks to join the bloc.

These competitive selection procedures were eliminated in 2025 under a controversial law that also destroyed prosecutors' procedural independence and eliminated the independence of Ukraine's anti-corruption agencies. The clause on anti-corruption agencies was later annulled but the ones on the prosecution service remained valid.

However, anti-corruption activists and legal experts have lambasted the recent prosecution reform bill because it does not envisage the participation of any independent or international experts. Prosecutors will dominate all the bodies supposed to reform the prosecution service.

"And in response to (the Carthage case), we get a 'sweeping reform of the Prosecutor’s Office,' Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center's…

Opening of the article, excerpted from The Kyiv Independent. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.