June 16, 2023
On June 15–16, in the context of cooperation between the German Foundation for International Legal Cooperation (IRZ) and the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, a two-day German-Ukrainian expert meeting to exchange experience on constitutional law issues held in an online format.
During the event, judges of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine and former judges of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, Prof. Dr. Reinhard Gaier and Prof. Dr. Udo Steiner, discussed a number of professional issues, including those related to the concept of „militant democracy“, war, crisis situations, etc.
At the beginning of the working meeting, Acting Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court Serhiy Holovaty underlined that the topics mentioned above are a matter of theory for many constitutional democracies, while for Ukraine, unfortunately, they are a concrete reality. According to him, European values such as genuine democracy, human rights and the rule of law, on which Europe was founded after the Second World War, are once again under threat from yet another genocidal war of the muscovites against Ukraine. „Given that Ukraine has demonstrated its commitment to European values and has been rooted in European civilisation for thousands of years, for this very reason it has been suffering annihilation from Eurasian dictatorship in the form of bolshevism, totalitarianism and, today, putinism or rushism for over a thousand years,“ emphasised Serhiy Holovaty.
At the beginning of the event, the judges of the Constitutional Court expressed their gratitude to the German people, government and colleagues for their unwavering support of Ukraine in this struggle. It was noted that the German Foundation for International Legal Cooperation (IRZ) has done a lot for the Constitutional Court of Ukraine by organising a professional exchange of views, scientific and practical experience on constitutional law between the constitutional jurisdictions of both countries.
At the same time, it is now urgent to consolidate the efforts of all constitutionalists to protect European values. Specifically, it is important that the legislative practice of European countries recognises the new term „rushism“, which reflects the essence of the current political regime of the russian federation. The judges believe that this would also contribute to a unified approach of international institutions to defining putin’s policy, and in the future, it would make it much easier to bring russian war criminals to justice.
The participants of the working meeting stressed that Germany developed its own approach to constitutional defence strategy and that it would be very useful for the judges of the Constitutional Court to share their experience with foreign colleagues in order to apply it when exercising constitutional review.
During the two-day expert exchange, its participants considered a number of important issues that are relevant to national constitutional justice. Participants also discussed practical issues of further cooperation and coordinated joint actions to implement the planned activities.
