European Solidarity initiates bill on resuming competitive selection of prosecutors to PGO
The European Solidarity faction is initiating a bill on resuming competitive selection of prosecutors to the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO), a faction member and chairperson of the parliamentary committee on Ukraine's integration into the European Union Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze has said.
"We... will submit it for registration [to the Verkhovna Rada] by the end of today," Klympush-Tsintsadze said at a briefing on Tuesday.
She said the competitive selection of prosecutors for the PGO was canceled by the law adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on the liquidation of the independence of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO).
"This law proposed and put into effect that prosecutors can be de facto arbitrarily dismissed through the reorganization of certain divisions of the Prosecutor General's Office... This thing actually returned us to the times of Yanukovych... that is, today the rules for the selection of prosecutors and their dismissal in the Prosecutor General's Office are the same as those that existed in Ukraine before 2014," the committee's head said.
According to the MP, the presidential bill on the restoration of the independence of the SAPO and NABU, which was adopted by the Verkhovna Rada last week, did not include a provision on the competitive selection of prosecutors for the PGO.
She also said the European Union has already credited Ukraine with the selection of prosecutors for the PGO on a competitive basis as a fulfilled obligation. "However, today this thing has been destroyed and we are trying to return it to our legal field," Klympush-Tsintsadze said.
