Ukraine

Revision of the draft reform of the Criminal Code of Ukraine

Ukraine

The Criminal Code Working Group of the Legal Reform Commission of the President of Ukraine recently met for a week in Bonn. IRZ has been advising its Ukrainian partners on the reform of their Criminal Code since 2021.

After written expert opinions and several online technical discussions, first on the general part and then on the specific part of the draft reform, the working group members now met with the German experts in person for the first time. In accordance with Ukraine's wishes, the working meeting focused on the regulations on financial crimes and corruption offenses, as well as on the possibilities and methods of recovery and confiscation.

The working group wanted to consult with its German colleagues on the extent to which the draft bill already implements the relevant EU directives and where there is room for improvement. The experts had already prepared written statements on this subject in the summer. Emeritus Prof Dr Thomas Weigend, University of Cologne, and Prof Dr Dr h.c. Bernd Heinrich, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, discussed the relevant passages of the draft Criminal Code at the beginning of the working week. The working group then spent two days engaged in in-depth internal work on the text, before returning to the experts at the end of the week to discuss any questions that had arisen. This format of concrete collaboration on the text has proven to be very effective and successful over the many years of IRZ's work.

The conference opened with a minute's silence in memory of Prof. Dr Robert Esser, University of Passau, who died unexpectedly on November 19, 2025, and who had written one of the three expert reports and had also wanted to participate in this professional exchange. The participants remembered him with sadness and gratitude.

German-Ukrainian expert discussions on constitutional law at the IRZ

Ukraine

Once again, in the second week of November, we welcomed the Acting President of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, Prof. Dr. Oleksandr Petryshyn, and five other members of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to our offices in Bonn as our guests. Together with former Federal Constitutional Court judges Prof. Dr. Udo Steiner and Prof. Dr. Reinhard Gaier, they continued their long-standing and ever-intensifying German-Ukrainian expert discussions.

This year, the topics discussed included the doctrine of the ‘intervention-like preliminary effect’ of the Federal Constitutional Court, the constitutional protection of social rights, the constitutionality of administrative, financial and tax sanctions, and the relationship between judicial restraint and judicial ‘activism’ in constitutional court rulings. As you can see, there was a lot to discuss!

We were particularly pleased that the President of the Constitutional Court of Rhineland-Palatinate, Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Lars Brocker – who is also President of the Higher Administrative Court – received the delegation in Koblenz afterwards to explain the relationship between administrative jurisdiction and constitutional jurisdiction and to present two decisions of the Constitutional Court of Rhineland-Palatinate that have attracted nationwide attention. Many thanks!