The Agency for Legislative Initiatives (ALI), together with its partners — the NGO Tomorrow’s Lawyer — is deepening its work on reform of the Bar. Experts from the organisations — Yevhen Krapyvin, Head of the ‘Law and Order’ Area at ALI, and Daria Pysarenko, Executive Director of the NGO ‘Tomorrow’s Lawyer’ — have joined the working group on improving legislation in the field of the Bar and the practice of law.
The issue of the effective functioning of the Bar in Ukraine is particularly acute — of the entire justice triangle, it is the Bar that remains unreformed to date. Its transformation is one of the European integration requirements. Since 2023, the European Commission has referred to this in its Enlargement Reports, each time noting the absence of any progress.
Participation in the working group continues ALI’s work on the Bar, dating back to 2018, when the Agency published the Shadow Report ‘The Bar of Ukraine: lessons from the first years of self-governance’. Subsequently, the issue of the Bar was addressed in the Shadow Reports to the European Commission’s Reports on Ukraine in 2023 and 2024. Thus, ALI and ‘Tomorrow’s Lawyer’ will now focus on the practical implementation of these recommendations.
What does the Agency for Legislative Initiatives plan to focus on within the working group? Yevhen Krapyvin notes:
The expert also notes that recently, during discussions of the Anti-Corruption Strategy provisions concerning the Bar, particular interest was rightly sparked by the proposal to introduce a comprehensive register of disciplinary decisions issued against advocates. In the courts and the prosecution service, such decisions have long been public. This makes it possible to analyse practice, identify problems and improve its quality. After all, the issue is not about funding or administration, but about the system’s readiness to operate transparently.
We congratulate the experts and wish them success in reforming the Bar in line with European standards. We will continue to share all findings and updates on the Agency’s platforms.
