Constitutional Court of Ukraine: Appointment Stagnation or a Chance for a Reset?

Making appointments to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine (CCU) and the High Council of Justice (HCJ) without delay is one of the ten requirements of the Kachka–Kos plan that Ukraine must implement in 2026. It was agreed in December 2025 as a priority plan for Ukraine in the areas of the rule of law and the fight against corruption.

Some progress in appointing members of the HCJ was made in March 2026, when the Congress of Judges of Ukraine voted for two selected candidates. By contrast, five months after the Kachka–Kos plan was agreed, no appointment to the CCU has taken place.

At present, 13 of the 18 judges serve on the Constitutional Court. The term of office of Judge Viktor Horodovenko (Congress of Judges quota) expires in November 2026. Two more terms expire on 2 March and 24 September 2027.

What is happening with the CCU selection competitions? What are the prospects for appointing new judges this year? And most importantly — what other urgent problems need to be resolved to strengthen the CCU and meet the EU integration requirements of the Rule of Law Roadmap? We explain below.

By Way of Introduction

For two and a half years, Ukraine has been selecting and appointing judges of the Constitutional Court under a new procedure. The process is lengthy, imperfect, costly and often ineffective, because competitions are held yet may produce no winner. This has already happened in two previous competitions under the quota of the Congress of Judges and in one competition under the quota of the President of Ukraine. Or someone is selected, but the appointing authority fails to approve them. This happened in 2025, when Parliament did not find enough votes for two candidates under its quota. After the preliminary verification required by law, they had been recommended by the Advisory Group of Experts (AGE).

Since the new procedure was introduced, four new judges have been appointed — two under the President’s quota (in 2025) and one each under the quotas of Parliament and the Congress of Judges (in 2024).

Moreover, in 2025, the CCU was unable to perform its functions for six months because it lacked a quorum. In effect, only one Senate was functioning at that time. Meanwhile, the President and Parliament delayed appointments. Ultimately, the President fulfilled his role, while Parliament failed to vote.

It was probably after this that the EU requirement for Ukraine to make ‘appointments without delay’ emerged.

Current Competitions

A new selection process under the parliamentary quota for two vacant positions is underway. Its outcome will become known on 6 May, when the AGE assesses the level of competence of candidates for the positions of CCU judges. This time, 10 people successfully passed the assessment of moral qualities and reached this stage.

Since April, the Advisory Group of Experts has also been reviewing the documents of candidates under the quota of the Congress of Judges. Here, 18 people are competing for two vacant positions. According to ALI, interviews with them will take place in July. By September, the AGE should form a list of candidates for appointment.

By contrast, the competition for one vacant position of CCU judge under the President’s quota has still not started. The start date is unknown.

If both competitions are successful, the appointment of a judge or judges under Parliament’s quota can be expected in the summer, and under the quota of the Congress of Judges in the autumn.

As regards the President’s quota, unless the competition starts within the next two to three weeks, appointments this year are unlikely, given the complexity and duration of the procedures. At the same time, it would be appropriate to announce a competition for the relevant vacancy in the coming months, taking into account the need to appoint a new judge under the same quota as early as March 2027.

We have previously written about how the competition procedures should be redesigned to accelerate the process. Yet things remain unchanged.

A Non-Existent Reserve List

Some CCU candidates currently participating in competitions have previously received the green light from the AGE. This brings back the discussion on the need to create a list of reserve candidates who were not appointed for technical reasons.

This concerns situations where the appointing authority, for example, did not have a sufficient number of candidates to make a decision. Specifically, if there is only one vacancy, the law requires at least two people to compete for it. Such a candidate should be able to reach the final stage of the next competition without having to go through the whole procedure again.

Another example is where one of the appointing authorities has fewer vacant positions than the number of qualified candidates in its view (for instance, one vacancy and three qualified candidates). In that case, such persons could be placed in a candidate pool for one or two years and then, without additional competitions, submitted for consideration by other appointing authorities.

This would save the time, money and effort of Ukrainian and international experts serving on the AGE. More importantly, it would not discourage qualified candidates from taking part in competitions. The figures show that fewer people are willing to apply. Instead, many people who have repeatedly received a red light from the AGE keep entering competitions again and again. As a result, there seem to be candidates, but it is difficult, and often simply impossible, to select at least two people for one vacancy.

At the same time, Draft Law No. 14149 has been pending in Parliament since last year and partly addresses these problems, although in a somewhat different way. However, some of its provisions have been criticised by the Venice Commission, so they need to be amended not only to pass the vote in the session hall but also to avoid conflict with our international partners.

A ‘Rare Commodity’

For those who closely follow all CCU judge selection processes or actively take part in them, every new competition feels like Groundhog Day. There are two reasons for this. The main one is that CCU judges are unique lawyers — essentially a ‘rare commodity’. A mere desire is not enough to quickly form an independent CCU bench with integrity.

Each selected judge must meet exceptionally high professional standards, be more than a good judge or someone who can draft complex texts well, but also have strategic vision. They must also have extremely high internal standards of integrity and ethics.

Moreover, a judge’s independence matters regardless of who appointed them. They must be equally independent from all branches of government.

And this is where the devil is in the detail. For example, AGE members ask candidates for the position of CCU judge about property acquired by their parents 30 years ago. Or they ask whether the candidate attended music school (what relevance does this have for a CCU judge at all?). Or why a Supreme Court judge decided to enter a competition for the CCU.

Here, the question is already for the Advisory Group of Experts: who exactly would they like to see as a candidate if questions arise about the intentions of certain SC judges to move to the CCU? Especially if some of them have spent half their lives working as judges of higher courts. Where else should such highly qualified lawyers go next?

Instead, one would like to hear the AGE more often ask how a candidate for CCU judge sees the solution to long-standing problems, such as the politicisation of the Constitutional Court. Or the prolonged delay in considering the most high-profile constitutional petitions, which have been pending before the CCU for five to ten years. For example, what should be done about lustration, on which the European Court of Human Rights expressed its position long ago, while the CCU is still unable to do the same?

Or they could ask how the work of the CCU should be reformatted so that cases are not considered for decades in the future. The list could go on.

These are the issues the AGE should examine alongside questions about the property of the candidate, their family, parents, grandparents and sometimes even ‘neighbours’. It should not be calculating how many days a male candidate spent on foreign business trips. Members of the AGE or other competition commissions, for example, may also spend weeks on business trips conducting interviews with candidates or preparing for them. Yet no one questions their integrity.

Key Figures

In 2022–2025, between 43 and 50 constitutional petitions were pending before the CCU. At the end of 2025, 48 such petitions remained pending, 32 of which had been submitted to the CCU before 2022.

From the beginning of the full-scale invasion until 2025, 19 constitutional petitions were submitted to the CCU. In the same period, the consideration of 17 petitions was completed, most of which (14) had been submitted back in 2015–2020. For example, a ruling closing one of the proceedings opened as far back as 2015 was adopted only in 2022.

In other words, over four years of war, two thirds of constitutional petitions have not been resolved. These are the country’s most complex issues, on which entire sectors or even the existence of individual bodies may depend.

For example, the constitutionality of the establishment and functioning of the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) has been under consideration since 2020. Given that two more higher specialised courts have now been established in Ukraine (which will consider administrative cases involving central executive bodies), a decision on the HACC is not merely timely — it is about four years overdue.

The CCU has also been drawn into the debate on the participation of international experts in competition commissions. Attempts are being made to remove them by manipulating the alleged interference with state sovereignty. This issue should be resolved now, even though CCU judges are currently being selected with the participation of international experts.

The situation is much better with the consideration of constitutional complaints. Since the possibility of lodging such complaints with the CCU was introduced in Ukraine (30 September 2016), persons entitled to a constitutional complaint have submitted more than four and a half thousand constitutional complaints to the CCU. The highest number was submitted in 2018 (690) and the lowest, for objective reasons, in 2022 (248). The CCU began adopting its first decisions following the consideration of constitutional complaints in 2019. There have been 67 such decisions in total.

The issues raised in complaints are less politicised than those in constitutional petitions. This is why the statistics for their consideration are several times better. However, it is worth noting how much procedural ‘clutter’ reaches the CCU. More than half of constitutional complaints do not even meet formal requirements. Many complainants do not understand the true role of the Court or the essence of such an instrument as a constitutional complaint and therefore try to turn the CCU into a ‘fourth’ judicial instance.

Even despite attempts to flood the entire Court with complaints, the introduction of the institution of constitutional complaint in 2016 was the right decision. The CCU is coping with this task.

Urgent Problems of the CCU

In addition to the issues already mentioned, attention should also be paid to the systemic problems caused by the Court functioning on the verge of a quorum. One such problem is the inability to ‘assemble’ the required number of votes even for important and progressive decisions. If, out of 18 judges, only 12–14 have been in office in recent years, and at least 10 votes in favour are required, this leads to constant postponements of the consideration of constitutional petitions.

Some decisions cannot even be put on the agenda for discussion. One reason is the reluctance of the rapporteur judge to submit a politically difficult issue for consideration (and nothing can currently be done about this). There are no mechanisms for the compulsory inclusion of such issues on the agenda. At the same time, the accumulation of unresolved cases creates a ‘vicious circle’: new cases continue to be distributed among judges, their total number grows, consideration periods become longer, and judges prioritise cases at their own discretion, giving preference to those they consider most relevant. However, even if mechanisms for mandatory inclusion on the agenda existed, how could a decision be adopted if the rapporteur judge, who knows the materials better than others, does not even want to discuss such a case?

The recusals and self-recusals of judges are also a problem. Given that some judges are former MPs who often voted for what now needs to be examined for constitutionality, the quorum is disrupted. It is one thing when one or two judges are recused or have recused themselves while 17–18 judges are in office. It is quite another when only 12–13 are in office.

Therefore, the unwillingness to appoint even selected candidates to the CCU, or delays in doing so, essentially blocks the Constitutional Court from adopting any decision.

It is now obvious that the Court functions under both internal and external political pressure. Thus, without the appointment of new CCU judges, the resolution of any truly important but highly political issues is effectively blocked. Yes, the Court may obtain a decision declaring minor legislative ‘flea’ unconstitutional. But resolving something that will produce 400 media stories within a couple of minutes is impossible.

Instead of Conclusions

We did not aim to list all existing problems of the Constitutional Court. This is the purpose of the Shadow Reports written annually by a coalition of civil society organisations coordinated by ALI and by other civil society representatives.

At this stage, however, it is extremely important to draw attention to the political and personnel dimension. Not only because this is a requirement of the Kachka–Kos plan, but because the balance of power in a country at war depends on a politically independent and internally stable CCU that functions properly. Ukraine must not only survive the battle with a rabid bear. It must also stay the internal dragons that have for years been destroying Ukraine’s attractiveness, above all for its own citizens who decide to raise their children abroad, as well as for our allies in the European Union and NATO, who are no longer as confident when speaking about Ukraine’s rapid accession even to the EU.