Material by the Agency for Legislative Initiatives for Ukrainska Pravda
On 16 September, the Verkhovna Rada voted to establish new courts — the Specialised District Administrative Court (SDAC) and the Specialised Administrative Court of Appeal (SACA). They will replace the dissolved District Administrative Court of Kyiv, notorious for its anti-Ukrainian rulings. The SDAC and SACA will handle an extremely sensitive category of cases — lawsuits against the Cabinet of Ministers, central executive bodies, the National Bank, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, the National Agency on Corruption Prevention and other key institutions. It took Parliament nearly three years to reach this decision. According to the Ukraine Facility Plan (the Plan), the law should have been adopted by the end of 2024.
At the same time, the commitments also state that the competition for positions at the SDAC and SACA must be announced by the end of September 2025, so that Ukraine does not fail to deliver on the key benchmarks of the Plan. By adopting the law just two weeks before the deadline, Parliament has effectively left the judiciary no chance to conduct this procedure within normal timeframes. Between the first and second readings, Draft Law No. 13302, designated as urgent by the President, gathered dust in the Verkhovna Rada for nearly three months. It is evident that the political leadership was not particularly interested in establishing new higher specialised courts, yet at the last moment, MPs remembered the benchmarks (and the funding tied to their fulfilment) and did eventually vote. The law still requires the President’s signature. Next, the High Council of Justice and the State Judicial Administration must determine the necessary number of judicial posts in the new courts, while the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine (HQCJ) must announce the competition.
Experts from the Agency for Legislative Initiatives note that the law defining the procedure for forming the SDAC and SACA carries numerous risks. Here is what stands in the way of establishing truly independent higher specialised courts.
The adopted law allows civil servants with seven to nine years of experience to apply for judicial positions, which creates an obvious conflict of interest. Representatives of the executive branch would, in effect, be able to adjudicate decisions made by their former employers. In other words, the state would be judging the state. Apart from the inevitable constant recusals of judges, the very structure of these courts differs from existing higher specialised courts, above all the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC). This raises the risk that in future the establishment of the SDAC and SACA may be declared unconstitutional. For example, there has already been a submission to the Constitutional Court recognising the HACC as unconstitutional, which the Court has failed to resolve over the past five years.
The competition for positions in the new courts will be conducted by the HQCJ together with a new advisory body — the Expert Council. It consists of three international experts with a casting vote and three Ukrainian judges. In practice, this means a judicial quota in both the HQCJ (eight members) and the Expert Council (three members), which is entirely unjustified and unclear. Moreover, civil society has raised objections regarding two of the three Ukrainian judges in the Expert Council.
The selection of judges for specialised courts should follow procedures that have already been tested and proven effective. One such example is the Public Council of International Experts, composed exclusively of foreigners, which oversees the competition for the HACC.
In addition, for the past three years, administrative cases of Kyiv residents have temporarily been heard by the Kyiv District Administrative Court (KDAC). The Kyiv City District Administrative Court (KCDAC), meanwhile, still exists only on paper. Judges are expected to be appointed there at best in 2026, when the HQCJ fills more than 1,800 vacant posts in local courts. Of these, over 50 judges are to be selected for the KCDAC.
Thus, in the end, new specialised courts will indeed be established. Yet at present, this does not look like a victory. Their creation entails several risks, among them the strengthening of political influence. It remains unclear where these fantastically independent judges will come from if the state intends to select civil servants to adjudicate disputes against the state.
The most important task now is to ensure an impartial and transparent selection of judges who are as virtuous and independent as possible. They must have no loyalty to the state, no political connections and no corruption risks. Otherwise, what was the point of it all? Simply to create yet another controlled court?
