Once the land market is open, the law abolishing the advocate's monopoly could deprive millions of Ukrainians of protection from raiders

This was emphasized by UNBA representative in the Verkhovna Rada Mykhaylo Dyadenko during the meeting of the Committee on Legal Policy of the Verkhovna Rada. The Committee considered the draft law No. 1013 on amending the Constitution of Ukraine (abolishing the advocate's monopoly).

On behalf of the lawyer community, Mykhaylo Dyadenko appealed to the people's deputies and urged them to refrain from adopting the document as it is now.

“Three years ago, the Verkhovna Rada decided on the so-called advocate's monopoly, giving the credit to the conclusion of the Venice Commission. Starting only this year, this decision started to be implemented. And without having seen the results of this decision, the question about the abolition of the advocate's monopoly arises. UNBA has repeatedly called for a broad dialogue on this issue, but the Committee has not heard the warnings of more than 50,000 advocates”, - Mykhaylo Dyadenko said.

The advocate warned the parliamentarians - the provisions of draft law No1013 will lead to violations of constitutional human rights, first of all, of the right to defense.

“The land market is planned to be open in the near future. Given the widespread use of raids by entire clans in Ukraine, the Verkhovna Rada may leave millions of Ukrainian citizens without legal protection of adequate quality. And such a hasty decision to abolish advocate's monopoly can lead to very negative results. Therefore, on behalf of the UNBA, I once again urge the PDs to postpone the consideration of this issue, to hold a wide dialogue and only after that to make a well-considered decision,” - the UNBA representative said.

At the same time, the Head of the UNBA Committee for Human Rights Anna Kolesnyk sent a letter to the Head of the Committee on Legal Policy Andrii Kostin urging to recognize the draft law No1013 to be returned to the subject of the legislative initiative.

She outlined a number of risks posed by this legislative initiative and called the abolition of the advocate's monopoly inadmissible in a European state of rule of law.

“The cancellation of exclusive representation in court can lead to the fact that any person will be able to represent before the court, in spite of having no legal education. This, in turn, will adversely affect the quality of the judiciary and will reduce the public's confidence in the judiciary. In addition, the abolition of the exclusive representation by advocates in the courts will lead to a more expensive judicial process for the state, since the hearing of cases will be delayed deliberately, as the representative will not bear any responsibility for it. It is also possible that a representative without proper education, qualifications due to ignorance of all the intricacies of the process, inability to gather evidence, etc. might also delay the trial, ” - the letter said.

The Secretary of the Parliamentary Committee on Legal Policy Oleg Makarov generally proposed to exclude draft law No. 1013 from the agenda of the committee. Only 4 PDs voted in favor of excluding this issue from the profile committee, 13 voted against, and two abstained. Therefore, this issue remains on the agenda.

As a result of its consideration, the Committee recommended the draft law to be approved by the Verkhovna Rada. 17 voted in favour, 3 against, one abstained.