“Ukrainian judicial institutions are not ready to join the EU. Corruption does not only affect the judges but every aspect of the judicial machine, which still suffers from an old mentality, where telephone justice or party justice dominated, a legacy of Russian culture in Europe Oriental”. Francesco Florit, judge from Udine, until last May at the head of the Judicial Unit of the European Union Advisory Mission (Euam – European Union Advisory Mission) in Ukraine, intervenes on the process of accelerating Ukraine’s accession to the European Union and to the ‘time.news states: “The Ukrainians are now demonstrating a dignity and a faith in European values that is extraordinary. They are giving us a beautiful moral lesson. They are dying for the ideals we proclaim. By now therefore the decision will be eminently political and not technical”. .
Florit continues: “If someone had asked me a year ago: will Ukrainians join the EU? I would have answered, not in my generation. The reason is that corruption in Ukraine is endemic and risks undermining the rule of law: it afflicts every level, from the chancellor to obtain the registration of the file, to the judge to obtain the anticipation of the hearing or, of course, the victory in the case or the acquittal. The system of the rule of law, that is the system of rules that govern the exercise of public power, it is undermined. The need for autonomy of the judicial system, as well as the independence of the Constitutional Court, are factors not yet fully affirmed. We want to find ourselves – ironically asks the judge – with judicial institutions in Europe who have these characteristics? I remember that the EU has already suffered from these aspects when Romania and Bulgaria joined “.
What is the risk of the ongoing process? “There is no level play field, that is the same field of action for all that will prevent, for example, EU funding from ending up in the hands of friends of friends – he replies – And in addition to the corruption factor, endemic and unavoidable, there is is the fact that a part of the population is pro-Russian. I happened to meet a judge who spoke in Russian and not Ukrainian because he felt closer to that world. Judge Oleksandr Kasminin, both appointed in 2013 by former President Yanukovych, pro-Russian, who took refuge in Moscow after the Maidan, have done so through two sentences that demolished the anti-corruption structure at the root, in a pretext manner “.
This fact then triggered the response of President Zelensky: “‘à la guerre comme à la guerre’, ‘you want war, you will have war’, an expression that I did not invent”, Florit remarks, recalling a speech published in the monthly Justice issue. “It was a huge problem. Zelensky overnight introduced a bill that annulled the Court’s decision and dissolved it, inviting the competent authorities to appoint new judges. It was the most glaring violation of the division of powers, fortunately blocked by the Council of Europe” .
The epilogue is clear: “There would be a need for a new judiciary but also the new judges, who will be admitted, must learn to manage their independence and not to abuse it, as unfortunately happens in countries of recent democracy, by developing a mechanism of self- protection, with the risk of destroying all reform initiatives. These are – he concludes – processes of change that require time and that cannot be ensured if the country is immediately admitted to the Union “.
(say Roberta Lanzara)