Seven alarming symptoms of the Ukrainian Bar
“Ukraine needs to urgently launch a comprehensive reform of the Bar, with the aim to ensure that the bodies of the UNBA are created on the basis of a transparent and credible procedure” – The European Commission in Enlargement Report for 2025. Why is it happening that for the third year in a row, the European Commission mentions the reform of the Bar in its enlargement reports? What steps should be prioritised and what criteria should we pay attention to? In this article, we will try to explain why the reform of the Bar is among the European Commission’s requirements and what practical steps the reform should start with.
Reform of the Bar: why the EU has raised this issue to the level of a political demand
The Bar is a self-governing and independent institution, which has perhaps the highest level of autonomy among all institutions of justice and professions with self-governing functions. No state body is involved in the formation of bar self-government bodies: only lawyers themselves decide who to admit to the profession, who to bring to disciplinary responsibility and who to disbar. Unlike judges or prosecutors, there are no representatives of the judiciary, the prosecutor’s office or the executive branch in the bodies of bar self-government. Instead, lawyers must be represented in the High Council of Justice and the Qualification and Disciplinary Prosecutors Commission. And unlike private enforcement agents, there are no officials from the Ministry of Justice or other state structures in the bar system. This is not a flaw, but rather a fundamental principle of the justice system. This approach ensures that the bar does not become an extension of the state hierarchy and is not subject to political or administrative influence.
This model is logical, as the Bar has a special mission – to ensure the independence of each lawyer in their practice, especially when they oppose state authorities in court and defend individuals from possible abuses of power. It is autonomy and self-governance that should enable the Bar to perform this role effectively and uncompromisingly. However, it should be remembered that the Bar is a public institution to which the state has delegated a key function – providing professional legal assistance, exclusive representation in courts and participation in the administration of justice. It has delegated this function. In other words, the Bar is simultaneously outside the state apparatus, but performs part of the state’s functions, which requires it to meet high standards of organisation, integrity and accountability to society.
It is important to understand that the framework rules for the functioning of the bar are determined by parliament. Thus, bar self-government bodies (hereinafter referred to as SGB) have broad powers for self-regulation, but the framework – rights, obligations, the procedure for forming bodies, basic principles and mechanisms, etc. – is established by law. And in the 13 years that the current law has been in force, we have clearly seen all its vulnerabilities: inconsistencies, gaps and, often, a lack of real safeguards against abuse. It is these legislative ‘loopholes’ that have become fertile ground for the systemic problems that are coming to light today.
Since 2016, the bar has been included in Chapter VIII of the Constitution of Ukraine, ‘Justice,’ alongside the courts and the prosecutor’s office. This constitutional provision emphasises that the Bar is part of the justice system and that its internal organisation and principles of operation must meet the same requirements as other public institutions on which fair justice depends. That is why, when Ukraine is undergoing major changes in its judicial system and prosecution authorities, the Bar must also meet modern standards of transparency, accountability, openness of procedures, and democratic internal management. Otherwise, the imbalance between reformed and unreformed elements of justice creates risks, as reflected by the European Commission in its annual reports. Without reform of the bar, it is impossible to complete judicial reform. The legitimacy, accessibility and quality of justice directly depend on the level of organisation and professional standards of the legal profession. If one of the key links in the justice system remains out of step with modern requirements and standards, this inevitably undermines the results of all other reforms.
The crisis in the bar has two dimensions – external and internal. The external aspect is the failure to perform constitutionally defined public functions: for several years now (since 2022), the bar has not delegated two members to the High Council of Justice and one to the Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of Prosecutors. It can be assumed that it was precisely the systematic failure to perform these basic constitutional functions that was the last straw that forced the European Commission to make the reform of the bar a separate priority.
It was the failure to comply with the law in 2022 – when elections to the bar self-government bodies were not held and, consequently, the Bar Congress did not take place – that attracted the attention not only of the professional community but also of the general public. The failure to perform a public function has caused a systemic personnel crisis in the High Council of Justice and the Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of Prosecutors: today, three years later, these bodies still do not have lawyer members who would represent the profession and participate in key decisions in the justice system.
At the same time, there is also an internal crisis, which is not only the backdrop but also the direct cause of external problems. It concerns the organisation of bar self-government, the quality of management processes, the legitimacy of decisions and the effectiveness of accountability mechanisms. This internal dysfunction directly affects the accessibility and quality of legal aid and the independence of each lawyer, the level of trust within the profession, and the ability of the bar to perform public functions delegated by the state.
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Will there be a reform of the Bar?
At the same time, there has been a constructive shift – the reform of the Bar has become visible at the level of strategic documents – this is the result of many years of work by analysts, expert organisations, lawyers and government representatives. For the second year in a row, the coalition of civil society organisations Advocates of the Future has been analysing the current state of the legal profession and formulating recommendations in a Shadow Report, which traditionally precedes the EU’s enlargement report.
A separate set of specific steps for the development of the legal profession is enshrined in the Roadmap on the Rule of Law, approved by the government. In addition, the legal profession will become part of the Strategy for the Development of the Justice System and Constitutional Justice until 2029, which is currently being developed by the Office of the President of Ukraine. The full scope of the European Union’s requirements is set out in the European Commission’s annual enlargement report. Together, these documents define the framework for the changes expected by the EU, the criteria that must be met, and why the legal profession has become part of the European integration agenda.
Will there be a reform of the Bar?
At the same time, there has been a constructive shift – the reform of the Bar has become visible at the level of strategic documents – this is the result of many years of work by analysts, expert organisations, lawyers and government representatives. For the second year in a row, the coalition of civil society organisations ‘Tomorrow`s Lawyer’ has been analysing the current state of the legal profession and formulating recommendations in its Shadow Report, which traditionally precedes the EU Enlargement Report.
A separate set of specific steps for the development of the bar is enshrined in the Roadmap on the Rule of Law, adopted by the government. In addition, the bar will become part of the Strategy for the Development of the Justice System and Constitutional Justice until 2029, which is currently being developed by the Office of the President of Ukraine. The full scope of the European Union’s requirements is set out in the European Commission’s annual enlargement report. Together, these documents define the framework for the changes expected by the EU, the criteria that must be met, and why the Bar has become part of the European integration agenda.
What does the European Commission say about the reform of the Bar and what steps are outlined in the Roadmap?
In this year’s Enlargement Report, the European Commission included the Bar in the section ‘In the coming year, Ukraine should in particular”. This section clearly states that Ukraine should advance the reforms of the Bar. Further on in the document, the EC specified its expectations regarding the content of these changes:
No progress was made on reform of the Bar. Concerns about the abuse of disciplinary mechanisms against lawyers and uneven disciplinary practices remain. The Ukrainian National Bar Association (UNBA) has still not launched the competition for the HCJ members from its quota. In addition, the Bar’s self-governing bodies have not held elections, despite their mandates having expired. Ukraine needs to urgently launch a comprehensive reform of the Bar, with the aim to ensure that the bodies of the UNBA are created on the basis of a transparent and credible procedure and to substantially improve qualifications, admissions, disciplinary liability, financial management and continuous training systems.
The European Commission makes it very clear that one of the top priorities of the reform is the selection of the High Council of Justice based on a transparent and trustworthy procedure, namely a competition for members of the High Council of Justice. It also mentions the need for changes in literally all functions of the bar: access to the profession, professional development and disciplinary procedures, not forgetting accountability to lawyers. The content of the section on the Bar in this year’s Enlargement Report echoes the content of the previous two years. And each time, this section begins with ‘no progress was made on reform of the Bar.’
The Roadmap on the Rule of Law, adopted by the Government in May 2025, contains fairly specific and detailed steps to launch the process of reforming the Bar and effectively reveals the EU’s recommendations, covering all the key issues also contained in the recommendations of the Shadow Report. The roadmap provides a coherent framework for initiating change: from updating the legislative framework and procedures for forming bar self-government bodies to strengthening standards of accountability, transparency and internal organisation. As this section is of key importance, it is appropriate to quote it almost in its entirety:
Strategic outcome: A transparent, accountable and professional Bar.
Measures: Develop and adopt a draft law to improve the legal regulation of the Bar, which will provide for:
– bringing legislation on the Bar, as well as acts of Bar self-government, into line with European standards and best practices;
– reforming bar self-government bodies, establishing clear and open competitive procedures for election to leadership positions in bar self-government bodies, and mandating regular elections;
– ensuring the functional excellence of the bar’s organisational and management system, in particular by increasing the transparency and accountability of bar self-government bodies;
– establishing the obligation of national-level bar self-government bodies to publish annual financial statements, which shall be subject to prior review by an independent auditor;
– establishing the possibility of holding the Bar Congress of Ukraine online if it is impossible to hold it offline;
– introducing a single standardised nationwide digitalised exam for persons wishing to become lawyers, with a view to ensuring equal access for all candidates and increasing the impartiality and objectivity of the process;
– improving the system of professional development for lawyers to ensure continuous training;
– establishing transparent and effective disciplinary procedures;
– bringing Ukrainian legislation in the field of advocacy into line with the requirements of Council Directive 77/249/EEC of 22 March 1977 and Directive 98/5/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 February 1998, in particular, defining: a) the specifics of the practice of law by lawyers from foreign countries on the territory of Ukraine; b) the procedure for including/excluding and renewing a foreign lawyer in the Unified Register of Lawyers of Ukraine; c) the exchange of information with the relevant state authorities or bar associations of the foreign state in which the lawyer obtained the status of a lawyer or acquired the right to practise law
– review and, where necessary, improve the Rules of Professional Ethics and Integrity for lawyers and members of bar self-government bodies in accordance with best European practices.Deadline for implementation – Q4 2026.
Responsible for implementation: Ministry of Justice, Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Ukrainian National Bar Association.
First and foremost, the Roadmap concerns changes in the electoral system, the formation and management of the Bar Association bodies, ensuring their transparency, competitiveness and accountability. These changes must definitely be incorporated into the law or even a new law must be created, which should contain effective safeguards against abuse and transparent, clear and understandable rules for performing the main functions of the Bar. This involves improving the functional efficiency of the system for organising and managing the legal profession: clear election procedures, stronger control mechanisms, openness of activities and regular renewal of governing bodies.
The document also identifies a number of tools aimed at transparency and accountability: annual financial reporting after an independent audit, the possibility of holding an online Congress, and the introduction of a single digitalised exam for admission to the profession. Separately, the DK allows for the improvement of the Rules of Professional Conduct, which covers the updating of integrity standards for both lawyers and members of self-governing bodies.
Why are the new rules for the election of the Bar Self-Governance important?
In all three key documents – the Shadow Report, the European Commission Report and the Roadmap – the first and decisive step is to change the rules for the formation of Bar Self-Governance bodies. This is no coincidence: the quality of the bar and the ability of bodies to act legitimately and accountably depend on how the SBA is elected and operates. The Shadow Report (section 2, p. 235) describes in detail the current state and problems in the SGB formation system. To summarise it in one sentence, it would not be an overstatement to say that the current model is closed, non-transparent and non-competitive, effectively depriving lawyers of choice, and the issue of starting elections is effectively locked into a single decision-making centre.
What exactly are the problems in the legal profession?
1. The problems with the system of forming the OAS have several dimensions. The first is excessive length of tenure.The term of office is five years, with a clear prohibition on holding office for more than two consecutive terms. However, a significant part of the OAS leadership has actually been in office for more than 13 years, which directly contradicts the law. This includes the Chair of the Bar Council of Ukraine, the UNBA, a significant part of the RAU and all regional OAS. For comparison, in most EU countries, bar self-government bodies are elected for a term of one to three years, with mandatory rotation. According to the UNAA, elections are currently impossible due to security risks associated with the state of war. However, the practice of other self-governing institutions shows otherwise. Judges and prosecutors were able to hold their conferences and congresses, elect delegates/representatives in the regions, including in regions that are regularly shelled. In Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Dnipro, Sumy and other frontline cities, where courts and prosecution authorities continue to operate. The system for electing self-government bodies for judges and prosecutors is similar in structure to the system for electing the SGB. Despite this, it is still considered impossible to hold the conferences of lawyers necessary to renew the self-government bodies. A separate problem, of course, is the complete absence of self-government bodies in Kyiv (the city with the largest number of registered lawyers).
Proposals to introduce online voting have been around for a long time, and this is a completely natural idea that is in line with the times, security realities and technological capabilities of Ukraine. Moreover, it would be logical to create a single digital election system for all professional self-governing communities that periodically form their governing bodies or delegate representatives: lawyers, judges, prosecutors, private enforcement agents, arbitration managers, and others. A unified electronic infrastructure, built on the common principles of transparency, competitiveness and democracy, could eliminate room for manipulation, increase trust and create true equality of access. Technically and organisationally, such elections could be ensured by an independent state body, such as the Ministry of Digital Transformation, which has the relevant expertise and trust built up during the implementation of national digital services.
2. Second – open voting. The law does not require secret voting for leadership positions. As a result, voting takes place openly in accordance with internal rules, which creates risks of pressure, group influence and undermines confidence in the electoral process. Incidentally, the legislation on the formation of the Council of Judges and Prosecutors contains clear requirements for secret voting for the personal composition of self-government bodies.
However, on 14 November, another round of arguments against electronic voting was heard. The head of the UNBA stated at a conference in Odesa that online elections are impossible due to electronic jamming devices. In addition, problems with electricity and, accordingly, the internet were mentioned. The arguments regarding the impossibility of holding elections in general were particularly surprising: among the reasons cited was a long list of regions where hostilities are ongoing or possible – Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Kharkiv, and Odesa regions. And all this was said… in Odesa, in the hall of the Odesa Law Academy, where the event was held offline. However, it was not a conference of lawyers. It is worth recalling that last year, the UNBA, together with Yaroslav Mudryi University, held a large-scale public event in Kharkiv, a city located much closer to the front line. And if large forums can be organised there, then why can’t one of the most important gatherings for the bar be held there?
3. Third – quotas and excessive centralisation. The UBA fully controls the procedures for determining quotas and nominating delegates. There is no methodology, and decisions cannot be appealed. This makes it possible to centrally block regional initiatives. A case in point is Khmelnytskyi region, where the regional bar council annually appeals to the Chair of the Bar Council of Ukraine with a request to convene a conference of lawyers in the region to start the election process, but the Bar Council of Ukraine has systematically refused to approve quotas for three years, effectively blocking the electoral process.
As a result, an overly centralised model has emerged in which regions cannot independently initiate elections, even when the terms of office of the authorities have clearly expired. In a number of regions, councils and the Qualification and Disciplinary Bar Commission (QDBC) continue to operate with expired powers, and in some cases the QDBC cannot function at all due to the lack of a quorum, and disciplinary complaints are redirected to other regions. This creates legal uncertainty, preserves power structures and undermines trust within the profession and among other institutions of justice to which the bar does not delegate representatives.
4. For the fourth consecutive year, lawyers have not received any financial reports from the bar self-government bodies. As of December 2024, there were over 70,000 lawyers registered with the Unified Register of Advocates of Ukraine, of which approximately 47,000 were active. The annual fee for 2024–2025 is 3,028 UAH. Simple arithmetic shows that this amounts to over 142 million UAH per year, for which no reports have been provided to lawyers. And this has been the case for the last four years.
And these are only membership fees. Added to these are payments for access to the profession, as well as payments for professional development activities. The total revenues managed by the bar self-government bodies are significantly higher. That is why both the European Commission and the Roadmap separately emphasise the need to improve the financial management and accountability of the Bar Association. This involves not only the regular publication of financial reports, but also the introduction of independent audits, which should become standard practice.
5. Access to the legal profession today is effectively behind closed doors. The procedure is literally like it used to be in school during the 9th grade exam: paper tickets, no uniform standards, and no safeguards to ensure objectivity and impartiality in assessment. Technologically, this process lags several decades behind transparent and meaningful competitions for judicial positions, and even behind the Unified State Examination. However, there is another, even more significant problem: the complete absence of integrity and ethics criteria for candidates, as well as the absence of any ‘cooling-off’ periods for persons leaving state bodies – judges, prosecutors, law enforcement officers. At the IV Carpathian Legal Forum, one of the judges of the Court of Appeal remarked: ‘I wish lawyers had their own Civil Council of Integrity’. I won’t hide the fact that this wish surprised me. And although I am not a supporter of involving external entities in the internal procedures of the bar and believe that, given the renewal of the system for forming the OAS, lawyers are capable of coping on their own, this remark sends an important signal.
6. The European Commission is primarily concerned about the abuse of disciplinary mechanisms against lawyers. The disciplinary system for lawyers has a number of inherent flaws that effectively turn it into a deterrent for those who try to raise issues of lack of transparency, concentration of power or other problems described above. There are dozens of cases that can be seen as evidence of selective or repressive use of disciplinary procedures. Among the most well-known are the cases of Artem Donets, Ilya Kostin, Valeria Kolomiets, Andriy Vyshnevsky, Oleg Ivanov and other lawyers, against whom disciplinary mechanisms were applied against the backdrop of their public position or criticism of the bar self-government bodies. All these and other cases are disclosed in the Shadow Reports for 2024 and 2025.
The first and most obvious problem is the legitimacy of the bodies that make disciplinary decisions. Disciplinary cases continue to be considered by the Bar Qualification and Disciplinary Commissions, whose terms of office expired in 2022. In some regions, the commissions cannot function at all due to the lack of a minimum number of members, so the Higher Qualification Commission of Advocates is forced to refer complaints to other regions – without automatic distribution, without clear criteria and without guarantees of impartiality. This structure calls into question both the legality of decisions and trust in the disciplinary mechanism itself.
No less indicative is the practice of the Bar Council of Ukraine interfering in the powers of disciplinary bodies. The decision to appoint an “acting chair” of the Higher Disciplinary Bar Commission, contrary to the direct provision of the law, which provides for the election of leadership exclusively by the Bar Congress, not only exceeds the competence of the Bar Association, but also calls into question the legality of all subsequent decisions of the commission. In fact, this creates a situation where the body responsible for ensuring independent disciplinary proceedings is itself dependent on the governing body, which is expressly prohibited by law.
Such decisions set a dangerous precedent of blurring the lines between the powers of administrative and disciplinary institutions of the bar. This, in turn, increases the risk of selective application of disciplinary procedures, especially in cases involving lawyers who are critical of the work of the BSG or raise issues of accountability and transparency.
Absence of a public register of disciplinary decisions. Unlike judges and prosecutors, for whom there are open and systematic registers of disciplinary practice, the situation in the Bar is fundamentally different. Formally, a register of disciplinary proceedings was ‘created’ by a decision of the Bar Council, but in practice it does not work and we have no statistical or open data. In the absence of a single open data set, lawyers are effectively unable to predict the risks of prosecution and understand the consistency or variability of disciplinary bodies’ approaches. Citizens, in turn, are unable to see how the system responds to violations by lawyers, or whether it responds at all. Thus, the absence of a functioning register deprives the disciplinary system of a key feature – public accountability – which puts it at a disadvantage compared to other legal institutions and exacerbates the general lack of trust.
7. A specific issue is the numerous complaints filed by the Higher School of Advocacy of the Ukrainian National Bar Association against lawyers for allegedly failing to fulfil their professional development obligations – a practice that creates the impression that lawyers are effectively being forced to purchase credit points. While preparing the Shadow Report, we conducted dozens of interviews, including with lawyers who had received such complaints and who literally bought 50 points in one evening (the cost of one point is over UAH 1,000) to avoid disciplinary liability. This is only possible because the necessary points can only be obtained from one provider – the Higher School of Advocacy, a private legal entity created by the UNBA, which creates an obvious conflict of interest and corruption risks. In other words, there is a monopoly even on the professional development of lawyers. At the same time, the Higher School of Advocacy is not accountable to lawyers for the financial part.
According to representatives of regional QDBCs, even if such commissions refuse to bring a lawyer to disciplinary responsibility for ‘failure to improve qualifications’ (a violation which, incidentally, is not provided for by the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Bar and Legal Practice’), the Higher Qualification and Disciplinary Bar Commission, after an appeal by the Bar Association, often overturns the decisions of regional commissions and suspends lawyers’ licences. This only reinforces the feeling of pressure and inequality between the parties in the disciplinary process. Unfortunately, due to the lack of open statistics, we can neither confirm nor refute the scale of this practice – and this in itself is a telling problem.
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So what is the UNBA’s response to the European Commission’s conclusions?
While preparing the Shadow Report, we sent an official request to the UNBA asking for its position on the assessments set out in the European Commission’s reports and quoted the relevant passages verbatim. In response, the UNBA stated that it had not officially received the texts of the European Commission’s reports for 2023 and 2024. To my knowledge, the European Commission does not send its annual reports to any Ukrainian institution separately – these are public documents that are officially published by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. Therefore, the response received from the UNBA seems unusual, to say the least. After all, we are talking about the basic guidelines for the state on the path to European integration, and the professional self-government of the bar should be one of the first to closely monitor such assessments and respond to them.
In psychology, there is the concept of “denial” – when a person refuses to acknowledge the reality of unpleasant or threatening information, facts or their own feelings in order to avoid psychological discomfort. After all, accepting them would mean the need for change. In the case of bar self-government, we observe a similar mechanism. This is not just a formal excuse – it is more like an attempt to deny the very existence of the problems that the EU has been pointing out for the third year in a row and which the government has clearly stated. These problems have been discussed for years by the professional and expert community. And while the European Commission clearly speaks of the need for transparency, democracy and renewal, the key institution of the bar demonstrates behaviour that can hardly be described as anything other than institutional denial.
Institutional denial is not just a mistake. It is a risk for the entire profession. Because reforms cannot be carried out in conditions where one side refuses to acknowledge the existence of a problem. The European Commission has formulated its conclusions unequivocally. Civil society organisations, lawyers and expert communities have done the same.
Today, more than ever, we need the opinions of lawyers from all regions, different practices, schools and generations. After all, lawyers are the legal profession. The Ukrainian legal community is extremely diverse, and it is this diversity that should be its strength, rather than becoming a weakness due to a centralised model that blocks internal discussion. On the international stage, we often hear the principle: ‘No word about Ukraine without Ukraine.’ The same should apply here: no word about the legal profession without lawyers. Reform is not a matter for one person or one council; it is a matter for the entire profession. Only lawyers should determine the future of their institution.
For this to be possible, the main thing is needed – updating the rules of the game. The criterion for whether the reform of the bar has really begun is, first and foremost, a change in the rules for electing bar self-government bodies – to a modern, democratic, transparent and competitive method. Without this, all other changes will have no real effect.
At the same time, updating the electoral procedures is only the first, but crucial, step. The roadmap contains a whole range of decisions that need to be implemented: from the functional perfection of the system of organisation and management of the bar to the reform of disciplinary procedures and the introduction of a nationwide digital exam. It is precisely the parliament and the government that must play a proactive role in implementing each of these elements, creating a legislative framework capable of finally modernising self-government.
After all, if the next elections are held according to the old rules – with closed quotas, open voting, centralised control and no competition – it will not be a technical mistake. It will be a de facto cementing of the current model for at least another five-year term and deliberate institutional stagnation for years to come.
