Preparations for the ratification of the Convention on the Protection of the Professions of Lawyer are in the final stages

On June 9, the Verkhovna Rada Committee on legal policy held a working meeting to prepare for the ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of the Professions of Lawyer. The Ministry of Justice and the Ukrainian National Bar Association agreed on approaches to draft laws regarding the ratification and implementation of the Convention. Participants have been given 10 days to prepare the draft laws that will be submitted for consideration.

Opening the meeting, the chairman of the Subcommittee on the organization and activities of the advocacy Volodymyr Vatras noted that the vast majority of proposals from the UNBA and the Ministry of Justice align, so the discussion focused on issues that still required coordination.

Deputy Minister of Justice Lyudmyla Kravchenko thanked the UNBA for reviewing the Ministry’s proposals and confirmed the Ministry of Justice’s readiness to take into account the positions of Members of Parliament, the advocacy community, and members of the working group in further work on the draft.

The position of advocacy was presented by the Vice President of the UNBA, BCU Valentin Gvozdiy. He reported that the Association had analyzed the contentious issues and was ready to resolve some of the differences, particularly regarding the scope of persons to whom certain guarantees would apply. The parties also aligned their approaches regarding the protection of UNBA employees and bodies of bar self-governance, guarantees of an advocate’s access to a client, procedural guarantees for advocates in criminal proceedings, and the procedure for entering an advocate’s premises. They agreed to refine the wording on which differences remain based on compromise drafts.

The meeting participants reached a consensus that the ratification and implementation package should cover precisely the issues related to the Convention. Work on the Roadmap on the Rule of Law will continue in parallel within a working group involving the Ministry of Justice and the UNBA.

Summarizing the meeting, Volodymyr Vatras proposed to record the agreements reached in an updated comparative table. Over the next 10 days, participants are to finalize the agreed-upon texts, after which the draft laws will be submitted for consideration in accordance with established procedure.

Thus, the preparatory work for the ratification of the Convention has entered the home stretch. As a reminder, the Convention, adopted by the Council of Europe on March 12, 2025, is the first legally binding international treaty dedicated to the protection of the advocate profession. Ukraine signed it on March 9, 2026, becoming the 28th signatory state, and has every chance of being among the first to ratify this treaty. This will demonstrate our country’s commitment to strengthening the rule of law — one of the key conditions on the path to European Union membership.