Lawyers are offered to be booked - amendments to draft law No. 10449

In their amendments to the draft law on strengthening mobilization, MPs propose to provide for the booking of lawyers. The goal is to prevent disruptions of court hearings.

This was reported by the Judicial and Legal Newspaper.

Currently, draft law No. 10449 is being prepared for the second reading in the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence. It provides for a postponement of mobilization for judges, members of the HCJ, HQCJ, disciplinary inspectors, and provides for the reservation of prosecutors, pre-trial investigation and law enforcement officers, but not lawyers. At the same time, criminal cases cannot be considered without lawyers.

Amendments to the draft law on mobilization submitted by MPs provide for the introduction of reservations for lawyers.

For example, member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee Roman Babiy proposes with amendment 2163 that not only persons working or serving in the National Police of Ukraine, prosecutor's offices, the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine, the State Emergency Service, the Judicial Protection Service, and courts should be subject to reservation, other state bodies and institutions of the justice system and pre-trial investigation bodies, patronage services (as adopted in the first reading), but also those who work in the institutions of the expert service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as state bailiffs, as private bailiffs, and as persons engaged in advocacy. Lawyers are also part of the justice system, as stated in the Constitution of Ukraine, and are called upon to protect the rights and freedoms of citizens in court. Given that the employees of the state prosecution system (prosecutors, law enforcement agencies) are armored, the same approach should be applied to the bar system.

Another member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Legal Policy, Serhiy Demchenko, also suggests adding lawyers to the list of reserved lawyers because they are parties to the trial and in case of their total mobilization, the work of the courts will be paralyzed.

Ihor Fris, a member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Legal Policy, as well as MPs Oleksandr Bakumov and Anatoliy Burmich (the latter with the clarification «except for persons whose right to practice law has been suspended or terminated»), also propose to book lawyers.

The corresponding amendment was also introduced by MP Mykola Tyshchenko, who proposes to book «lawyers whose information is included in the Unified Register of Lawyers of Ukraine and is displayed on the official website of the Ukrainian National Bar Association, and whose right to practice law has not been suspended».

In his turn, Volodymyr Vatras, a member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Legal Policy, proposes to equate the law on mobilization with the consequences of military service to the appointment as a judge, member of the High Council of Justice and the HQCJ, appointment (election) of a public and private bailiff, and a lawyer providing free secondary legal aid.

As a reminder, the UNBA has previously drawn attention to the need to amend Draft Law No. 10449.