On April 20, 2023, at the public part of the plenary session, in the form of written proceedings, the Grand Chamber deliberated the case upon the constitutional petition of 49 People's Deputies of Ukraine regarding the conformity of the Resolution of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine “On the Formation and Liquidation of Districts” dated July 17, 2020 No. 807-IX (hereinafter referred to as “Resolution”) with the Constitution of Ukraine.
During the plenary session, the judge-rapporteur in the case Viktor Kolisnyk informed that the subject of the right to constitutional petition - 49 People's Deputies of Ukraine - appealed to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to recognise the Resolution as not conforming to the Constitution of Ukraine.
According to the Resolution, in particular, 136 districts have been formed; 490 districts that had existed before the adoption of the Resolution were liquidated, it was determined that the boundaries of the districts are established along the outer border of the territories of rural, township, and urban territorial communities that are part of the respective district.
The authors of the petition believe that the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, having adopted the Resolution, established new principles of the administrative and territorial system of Ukraine at the medium (sub-regional) level and actually changed the territorial system of Ukraine.
As noted by the judge-rapporteur, the constitutional petition contains the statement that the Resolution led to a complication of access to justice for citizens of Ukraine. The system of the prosecution offices and pre-trial investigation is built according to the country's administrative and territorial system, thus when the boundaries of the districts' territories are changed, the problem of harmonising the entire system of law enforcement agencies to determine their sub-department and jurisdiction of cases has arisen.
According to the subject of the right to constitutional petition, citizens of Ukraine are deprived of real access both to the bodies of executive power and local self-government bodies, and to the courts. They believe that consolidation of the territories of the districts may create additional complications, which in the future will lead to the prolongation of court processes and violation of procedural terms, and the procedure of reorganisation of courts in view of the consolidation of districts requires the involvement of huge organisational and material resources.
Moreover, the Resolution defines the cities that have become the administrative centres of the respective districts. However, according to the People's Deputies, the legislation of Ukraine does not ensure the concept of “administrative centre of the district”, nor does it regulate the peculiarities of the status of administrative and territorial units in view of their definition by such centres.
In their opinion, this does not correspond to the principle of legal certainty enshrined in Article 8 of the Constitution of Ukraine.
The judge-rapporteur also reported that in order to ensure a full-fledged and objective deliberation of the case and the adoption of a reasoned decision by the Court, he sent inquiries to higher education establishments, academic and state institutions regarding the issues raised in the constitutional petition.
During the plenary session, the Court deliberated several requests from the subject of the right to constitutional petition Serhii Vlasenko. Thus, based on the results of their discussion, the Court granted recusal motion of the judge of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, Olha Sovhyria, for deliberation of this case, and refused to grant the motion to change the form of constitutional proceedings from written to oral. The Court will also deliberate, in the in-camera part of the plenary session, a request for deliberation of a separate issue in this case in the order of oral proceedings.
Therefore, the Court completed the study of the case files in the public part of the plenary session and proceeded to the in-camera part for a decision.
The representative of the subject of the right to constitutional petition, People's Deputy of Ukraine Serhii Vlasenko, Permanent Representative of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine at the Constitutional Court of Ukraine Maksym Dyrdin, Representative of the President of Ukraine at the Constitutional Court of Ukraine Serhii Dembovskyi attended the plenary session of the Grand Chamber.
The public part of the plenary session is available on the official website of the Court in the section “Archive of Video Broadcasts of Sessions”.
