HQCJU Chairman Serhii Koziakov: Anti-Corruption Court Itself Will Not Solve the Problem of Corruption in Ukraine
Sep 28, 2018 | Judiciary
Oleh Chernysh HQCJ Chairman Serhii Koziakov Original in Ukrainian: (https://ukranews.com/ua/interview/2035-sergiy-kozyakov-antykorupciynyy-sud-sam-po-sobi-ne-vyrishyt-problemu-korupcii-v-ukraini) *Corruption in Ukraine has long become something proverbial – everyone seems to be vigorously struggling with it, but the results look less than promising so far. It seems that despite many new authorities created, NABU and SAPO making their activity visible on a daily basis, sometimes even towards each other, but the society and international experts are stubborn in their disbelief of changes. The long-awaited and repeatedly announced High Anti-Corruption Court, created this summer, is intended to put the lid on the matter and make the vowed principle “Corrupt officials shall be thrown in jail” come true. According to President Poroshenko, it is the ultimate stage of the "anticorruption infrastructure" building in the country.
The High Qualification Commission of Judges (HQCJ), which already began to receive the first applications from candidates in early August, should form a court of honest, courageous, and integral judges.
At the same time, the Commission often finds itself under the fire of criticism from activists from the Public Integrity Council (PIC). It is these two bodies, the PIC and the HQCJ, that collectively selected judges for a new Supreme Court. And while the Commission is satisfied with the final selection of 120 lucky candidates, the Public Integrity Council expressed its indignation at the fact that the new Supreme Court included 30 judges whom they vetoed. The conflict reached its peak in March this year, when members of the PIC publicly stated that they did not intend to continue their participation in the qualification assessment of judges held by the HQCJ.
In order to deal with all the nuances of the conflict with the public activists, as well as to find out about the first candidates for the Anti-Corruption Court and to talk about the high salary of the members of the Commission, Ukrainian News agency fixed an interview with the HQCJ Chairman Serhii Koziakov.
While his colleagues headed to vacations during the scorching August, the Chairman of the Commission stays at his workplace and personally controls the procedures of qualification assessment of judges, which take place almost every day throughout the summer due to a tight schedule.
The big table for negotiations in Mr. Koziakov’s office is literally flooded with documents, drawings and schedules, which he is delighted to demonstrate. The Chairman of the HQCJ shows the schedule of Commission meetings on giant A2 format papers, examines the conclusions and dissenting opinions of the members of the Qualification Commission regarding certain candidates to judicial positions, and, moreover, demonstrates a specially prepared information note on the success of the work of anti-corruption courts in different countries of the world. Moreover, “off the record” Mr. Koziakov provides extensive and interesting reflections on the integrity of some odious judges, candidates to judicial positions and public activists.
Unfortunately, while approving the final interview text, HQCJ Chairman decided to remove a lot of emotional points from the text, in particular, the phrase “drastically large” describing his salary, and, to the contrary, added more detailed information about the effectiveness of the PIC with references to the opinion of European experts.*
Nevertheless, the informality and liveliness of the conversation were preserved in the final text of the interview.
Let's start with the hottest topic this summer - the creation of the Anti-Corruption Court. As far as I understand, since August 8, HQCJ started receiving the first applications from those who are willing to take part in the competition? How many of them are there at the moment? Only three (as of August 17, ed.).
So little?
Of course. We just announced that we are ready to accept the documents since August 8. Obviously, because the list of document is rather extensive, their collection will take some time.
We proceed from the fact that the candidate for such a unique court should painstakingly prepare the documents, because if there is no document or it is not prepared according to the requirements, then this candidate will simply not be admitted to the competition. There cannot be any trivia here. At present, the Commission is preparing information on typical mistakes and inaccuracies in filing documents to be published soon and guide the candidates.
I am asking this, since the media already flashed the information about the first candidates for the judicial positions of the Anticorruption Court, among them such well-known personalities as RPR activist Mykhailo Zhernakov and Poltava judge Larysa Holnyk ...
Yes, but this was information not about those who submitted documents, but about those who filed only a statement of intent. These are different things. A statement of intent is not yet part of the procedure, it's just our request for potential candidates to inform us whether they intend to apply. We do this to collect data for developing our work plan.
That is, these people really registered and filed a statement about their intention to apply for a competition at the Anticorruption Court?
I would rather avoid either confirming or refuting this ... It will become a legal fact as soon as we begin to publish the dossiers of the candidates.
Well, and if we talk without disclosing surnames, how many public activists or politicians, for example, have registered for the competition?
I did not see any politicians there. No one. Frankly, I did not look very carefully at this list. I can say that according to our information, only 37% of the registered applicants are working judges, 41% are lawyers, 14% are legal scholars, and 8% are candidates with a combined experience. As for the age, the majority, 52% of candidates, are 30 to 39. However, the number of women applicants is unfortunately substantially less than those in the Supreme Court competition.
Let’s talk about the competition timeframes. Is there a risk that the competition will be delayed or vice versa will be accelerated due to numerous statements about the need for the High Anti-Corruption Court to be launched as fast as possible?
We plan that the competition will be completed approximately in 7 months. We would like to announce the candidate rating in February. What can prevent it, is the timing. They key events will take place during the presidential campaign period. It is not easy to push reform forward during the presidential election. The contest itself and the idea of creating this court are extremely politicized.
For example, we hold a competition to the High Court of Intellectual Property at the same time. But none of the politicians and hardly someone from the public is interested in it, although its value for the country is not lower than that of the Anti-Corruption Court.
Second, we will need to prepare very seriously for joint work with the Public Council of International Experts (PCIE). Unfortunately, the legislative provisions governing this council's activity are much more succinct than the ones regarding the activities of the Public Integrity Council (PIC). That is, will legislative changes be necessary to regulate the work of the PCIE?
MPs will not manage to supplement the law quickly. Unfortunately, none of the parties that took an active part in drafting the bill on the High Anti-Corruption Court, contacted us for advice on important details of the procedure when agreeing on the final version of its text. Therefore, at present, the standing rules of the PCIE activities contain a number of gaps and we must get prepared for this in coherence with our partners.
By the way, did international organizations provide their candidates for inclusion in this council?
We are currently awaiting replies from international organizations to our invitations, which we sent through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We held a number of meetings with representatives of these organizations, where we discussed in detail some of the basic things. Currently, these organizations are holding consultations, where we do not take part. I want to emphasize: we observe and understand that our European and American colleagues are eager to provide us with suggestions on the most professional candidates for the PCIE. Therefore, the application deadline is mid-September? The date which we jointly identified with representatives of international organizations is September 14-th. And they readily agreed to it. Earlier than this date and until at least 12 candidates for 6 posts are proposed, the PCIE composition will not be approved.
In your opinion, will the PCIE have enough powers to remove the judges who are not integral or not sufficiently active in comparing corruption?
What made you think that only the Public Council of International Experts would filter out unscrupulous candidates? For some reason, it is thought that we will "protect" these candidates, and they will try to remove them. But we also can do this! About 18% of judges who took qualification assessment will no longer continue their work in court, because they failed to pass the examination. This is a significant amount. Therefore, we are going to do this together with the Public Council now. But we have a task not only to filter out, but also to identify professional and integral candidates who will become judges at the High Anticorruption Court. Suppose there will be about 350 candidates for 39 posts. Someone will be the winner in the ranking, and a certain number of candidates will not achieve the passing score. I understand your stance, but it is also no secret that you have been working for over a year against the backdrop of the recurring statements from the PIC members that the HQCJ "allows the dishonest judges in the profession and prevents the PIC from proper functioning... " I admit that some of these statements are not completely objective and grounded, but nevertheless they do not arise from out of nothing, do they? I will say so: this is a debate which sometimes gets very harsh and heated. It's because we have a different job, I do not say that there are different tasks, as we pursue a common goal. The content of our work is different. Our job is to fulfill the state assignment defined by law, for example, to ensure qualification assessment of the whole judicial corps or create the new Supreme Court through an open competition, we do it amid attacks of the dissatisfied parties from different sides: some are against the qualification assessment in general and others oppose the fact that it is possible to analyze actual facts in this process in a cold-headed manner, to avoid losing the essence to emotions.
The representatives of the public have a different task. This is a "3-in-1" mission: control, monitoring and criticism. By the way, it is very similar to the media activity, right? When the media only praises a state body, it is very suspicious (laughs - Ed.).
The debate with the PIC, moreover, sometimes arose as well because the Public Integrity Council, in the opinion of the members of the Commission, exceeded the scope of its mandate and the limits set forth of the law, and began to criticize us, while they are actually not entitled to do it by law. Let's pragmatically and calmly focus on the examples and conclusions outlined in, for example, the Council of Europe report on the methodology of the PIC activities and the analysis of their findings during the competition to the Supreme Court, and the decision-making logic of the Commission regarding the individual candidates thus will become much clearer. Are you ready to pledge the integrity of all the 30 judges of the Supreme Court, whose candidatures have been vetted by the PIC, but who eventually became judges of the Supreme Court? A pledge is a type of civil law deal (laughs - ed.) It means the guarantor's obligation to the creditor to bear responsibility for the debtor’s default. I can only say that many of our decisions were taken unanimously, but others were also caused much of controversy and doubts. The same is true for the PIC – there are also dissenting opinions and even cases of cancellation of their own decisions. Of the 146 opinions that the PIC prepared regarding the candidates for the first contest to the Supreme Court, 12 were canceled by them, sometimes even when the candidate had already failed an interview. I will also say so: can a body that issues driving licenses guarantee that the professional driver will always drive safely in the future? And to close this issue, is the PIC currently taking part in the qualification assessment, and will it participate in the selection of judges to the Supreme Court? As Chairman of the Venice Commission Gianni Buquicchio, we have repeatedly called on the PIC to adhere to the law and to participate in the qualification assessment process. I consider that joint work during the reform implementation constitutes a stronger position than a boycott. At present, the site PIC website sometimes publishes opinions on judges. That is, they do actually work? Let's figure this issue out together. According to the law, the result of the work of the PIC is to provide the Commission with information or opinions on judges or candidates for the position of judge. Moreover, members of the PIC may participate in interviews with judges. At the moment, the following happens: materials are sometimes published on the PIC website regarding individual judges under the heading "opinion", but these materials are not formally received by us. Sometimes it happened right at the time of the interview with the judge. This is a significant violation of the procedure. The negative opinion, until it is formally sent to us, is just an information, the same as if it was published by any media. That is, some work seems to be done. But there are no legal consequences. We draw attention to this information and ask judges questions about this information, though. Don’t you consider such behavior of the PIC members to be weird? I consider that the law must be obeyed. The law states that the Public Integrity Council is formed to assist the HQCJ in assessing the suitability of a judge or candidate for a judicial office under a criterion for professional ethics and integrity for the purposes of qualification assessment. There is no provision for such a concept as "suspending activities" or "quitting the qualification process" in the law. That is, this work is the obligation, not the right of the PIC members. If they do not fulfill their duty in full, it is frustrating, this is improper. Hundreds of thousands of active citizens are engaged in public activities in Ukraine. Among them there are many who have the capacity and will to contribute of the formation of the judiciary to the fullest extent envisaged by law.
What is the way out of the situation? In November, the 2-year tenure of this PIC composition expires. I want to note that all stakeholders - public organizations, donors, MPs, the HQCJ need to gather at the round table and take the necessary steps to strengthen the capacity of the successive PIC composition to cope with large workload, which the current members most likely did not expect. It is necessary to address the issue of financing the expenses of the Secretariat, the premises and the remuneration for their work. It is extremely important to have in the PIC the people with previous experience of managing large-scale office work, including crisis management as an especially important aspect. It is also necessary to take a fundamental decision whether the members of the PIC bear responsibility for the outcome of their work, at least to the public organizations that have delegated them. Can we agree that a member of the PIC, after completing the procedure for his election as a member of the PIC, may consider his subsequent work only as a personal project? Civil society organizations should delegate candidates to the next composition of the PIC on the basis of an open competitive selection, which we seem to have been observed only in one of the public organizations when determining the previous composition of the PIC. It is also important to reflect together on how to help future members of the PIC to withstand the temptation to combine civic activity with the political aims. A somewhat general question regarding the Anti-Corruption Court, but nevertheless. Will the creation of this court allow to overcome the corruption in the country? Of course, the court alone will not completely overcome it. There are several myths that we fostered ourselves. The first is that the High Anti-Corruption Court is a continuation or completion of the anti-corruption system building in the country. This is not a law enforcement agency and not a dedicated anti-corruption body! It will be a court and nothing more than a court! And the court has to make fair verdicts. Even when this court considers high-profile corruption charges, this will not completely solve the problem of corruption at all levels and throughout the country. This is confirmed by the practice of other countries where such courts operate.
I’d like to ask a simple question to you and to myself at the same time – everyone expects that the court will now start working and convicting the guilty. But what if the first verdict is an acquittal? What will happen then? Commission together with international experts will have to bear the blame? Or the judges? And if the second sentence is also exculpatory? And if the trial is delayed, who will be guilty? The judge? Or prosecutors who can skip sessions? Or the lawyers who delay the trial because they exercise their procedural rights to protect the interests of the client? Prosecutors and lawyers who will be involved in the process must be no less professional and integral than judges, right? Therefore, the main task of the judges of this court is to be fair. At present, mass media cover a great deal of litigation, where, in addition to monitoring the work of judges, it is also useful to observe the work of prosecutors and lawyers. I would recommend Ukrainians to follow the work of all professionals involved in the trial. The second myth is that corruption persists somewhere in the top strata of the society and far away, and it does not affect everyone. Therefore, the work of the High Anti-Corruption Court will tackle only high-profile corruption. How many verdicts will be there per year? About 50 or 100? And where will routine, day-to-day corruption vanish? How many people give bribes when they go to a doctor? How many people give bribes, or so-called “charitable contributions” to schools or kindergartens? Unfortunately, this is happening almost every day. I’ll tell you something which may actually upset you. But I’ll still shatter your illusions, and then I’ll try to revive your optimism. There are 20 countries where anticorruption courts were created. Overall statistics shows that the creation of such a court almost never caused a significant improvement of the country’s Transparency International Corruption Perception Rating. For example, the Anticorruption Court was established in the Philippines in 1979, and in 2005 the country ranked 117-th, in 2010 – 134-th, and in 2017 – 111-th. That is, they are lingering around the same indicator. Let’s consider Pakistan. In 1999, the court was created, and the country’s ranking was 87-th, in 2005 – 144-th, and now – 117-th. It has even deteriorated in comparison to the moment of the court establishment ... In Nigeria, in February this year, the Chief Judge of their Anti-Corruption Court was arrested for corrupt actions. In Indonesia, just the same thing happened to the two judges of the anticorruption court as well.
So you are less than optimistic in this matter? Not at all! I am optimistic. But I’m also pragmatic. I am only warning against the belief that the Anti-Corruption Court is a panacea in the fight against corruption. This court is important. But there are other essential and necessary measures that need to be persistently implemented. It is necessary to set populism aside and abandon the idea that the creation of the Anti-Corruption court will exterminate corruption on all levels and in all the cities and villages of our country. Tenacious and systematic measures, determination and consistency at all levels of society – that is what will bring us a solid outcome. This is already happening in the judicial system for example. Look, over the past two years, the President and Parliament have been dismantled of political influence over the appointment of judges. Therefore, judges are already independent of these two highest state institutions. For the first time, a new Supreme Court was created on the basis of an open competition, including the people “from outside of the system” – legal scholars and academicians. The new Supreme Court has already passed tens of thousands of new solutions. And attorneys involved in litigation in this court largely do not have serious reservations about it. I would not say that everyone was praising the new court. But lawyers really observe a lot of new positive developments in the work of the new Supreme Court. Judges who successfully passed a qualification assessment or a competition to a new Supreme Court received the salary of approximately UAH 45,000 in local courts up to UAH 250,000 at the Supreme Court. That's “the carrot”. This is an extremely strong social act of the state, which enables judges to confidently carry out the necessary expenses and properly support their families. "The stick", on the other hand, is the obligation to fill out an electronic declaration and verification of by the NAPC and the NABU. Moreover, one should not forget about the Security Service and the law enforcement bodies. Now no one can say that the judges will be able to take bribes because of a scarce salary. Judges now have decent salaries, as well as their assistants and secretaries. In general, courts and judges became much more open. This is facilitated by the openness of staff and disciplinary procedures, as well as the publication of electronic declarations, and the dossiers of judges with family relationship declarations and integrity declarations. I don’t think I exaggerate by saying that such a level of openness of the judiciary in Ukraine is not achieved in any other country. If possible, I will add a remark on salaries. We all know that the top managers of state enterprises and top officials, including you, have a very high salary (in March 2017, the media released information on salaries of members of the HQCJ, which is over UAH 200,000 a month.) It is. So you understand that? Of course. Thus, when ordinary people see information in the media about your monthly salary of UAH 300,000, they react not just in a negative manner, but with real hatred and anger. After taxes I have about UAH 200,000 at my hands. I will tell you more, since the salaries of the HQCJ members were disclosed, over the past year there were seven cases of serious theft of property of the members of the Commission, including house or car burglary. There were seven cases! To the two Commission members it happened even twice! That’s how the things are. Hatred does not grow out of nothing. Hatred is very easily fueled and pointed against specific people. We are watching closely how certain individuals, dissatisfied with our decisions, throw in short aggressive and tarnishing messages not only in social networks, but also in blogs on electronic media and live on TV channels. This hate-mongering once was targeted towards all judges in general. Now this situation has changed, then aggression and radical attacks shifted to specific personalities. Meanwhile, when I started working at the HQCJ, I had a salary of UAH 5,600, and I decided for myself that I would make it through this year and resume the practice of law. And then in Parliament, a bill was introduced setting the remuneration of the judges of the new Supreme Court, as well as the members of the HQCJ and the High Council of Justice, who carry out a vast scope of administrative and disciplinary procedures in relation to judges. I am confident that judges could have told a lot about the level of corruption in these two state bodies five years ago, while the situation is completely different now. But it is better to ask them about it. Well, let's go back to the urgent issues. As you know, the massive reorganization of local courts in the autumn of this year should start in accordance with the Decree of the President dated December 29 of the last year ... It has already begun. So, new courts are now only created as legal entities, but they have to start actual functioning. By the President’s decree of December 29, some courts were liquidated, some were reorganized, currently established the new appellate district courts and district local courts are established as legal entities. A large number of judges who are currently working in the old appellate courts, but successfully passed a qualification assessment, will be appointed to the new appellate district courts. We forwarded to the High Council of Justice the documents on the transfer of almost 900 judges to the new appellate courts in August. In the coming weeks, the High Council of Justice will decide on them, and in September the President, I hope, will issue the relevant decrees. Therefore, the appellate instance of the new judiciary will be basically formed, and judges who have successfully passed qualification assessment, will receive new level of judge remuneration. They passed this terribly tedious exam, psychological testing and live interviews and will actively get to work. I hope that it will be different people after that. I see what’s the situation regarding the appellate instance. And new local courts will also start working in September instead of the former district courts? As for the local courts in the cities with over a million of residents, I hope that in September, we will also complete the assessment of the judges for the transfer to these courts in general. They also have to start working as quickly as possible. I hope that the entire judicial corps of Ukraine will complete the judicial examination stage by the end of summer. Even now, when almost all the members of the HQCJ are on vacation, judges come to us and take the exam supported by the Commission Secretariat. I must admit I thought that all new courts would start working at the same time. That is impossible. The appellate courts are expected to start work, that’s true. Some local courts in the millionaire cities probably will start operating too, but not all. Not each and every court will manage to start working under such short deadlines. Some public figures are already criticizing us for such a fast pace. I’d like to focus on one more issue. This question, in general, should have been purely technical, but it rather unexpectedly got quite poignant. I mean the President’s decrees on the appointment of judges. According to the law, such a decree should be issued within 30 days, but actually the President drags this process over many months, and in some cases, such as the appointment of 3 judges of the new Supreme Court Valentyna Symonenko, Serhii Slynko and Viktoria Matsedonskaya, this decree is not issued for almost year. How do you explain it? The Commission does not have a custom to comment on the decision or omissions of other state bodies. Our country already has a plenty of officials from some state bodies to criticize their colleagues from another institutions and vice versa. We avoid this. But the law establishes a specific date. What is important for me about this particular situation, is that the new Supreme Court is operational. We fulfilled our task - they provided recommendations to the High Council of Justice regarding the required number of judges for the new Supreme Court. The High Council of Justice has made the final decision. And the President signed decrees appointing the number of judges necessary for the start of work. The new Supreme Court is launched. This is the ultimate result. Let me make another remark about the new Supreme Court. Not everything goes smooth there as well. Some of the judges of the former Supreme Court of Ukraine (SCU) do not recognize its reorganization and continue to go to work, claiming the changes, including your actions, to be illegal. What solution would you offer to this quite awkward situation? When we announced a competition for judicial positions in the new Supreme Court, the judges of the former Supreme Court of Ukraine were fully entitled to take part in the contest. Pay attention, that 11 of 12 judges took advantage of it. Most of them have failed, while four have passed the contest and are currently working as judges of the new Supreme Court. The Commission has another obligation, which is to transfer judges to another court in the event of the liquidation or reorganization of any court. We fulfilled our duty and transferred all of these 12 judges to the Kyiv Courts of Appeal. By the way, we could have transferred them to other regions. We have also transferred the judges of the High Specialized Courts subject to liquidation to courts of appeal throughout the country. What about the statements that you did not have the lawful right to transfer the judges of the Supreme Court to the lower instance court? This is a misleading statement. It is expressly stated in the law that the Commission may transfer a judge to the court of the same or lower level, I emphasize again, in the event of liquidation or reorganization of the court. How do you expect this situation to advance? Is it no longer interesting to you? The situation continues to develop. This is the job of the liquidation commission of the old Supreme Court of Ukraine. We continue to monitor the situation. Your position seems clear. Our position is reticent. Let's proceed from the fact that during the reform there are always those who are satisfied and those who are dissatisfied. If some individual judges are dissatisfied with the reform, while hundreds and thousands of judges welcome it, then this is a solid positive result. It seems to me that there is only one negative nuance of the case is that this reorganization of the Supreme Court was somewhat shady in terms of the law. There was no reorganization whatsoever. A new Supreme Court was created. Some fake statements were disseminated in the media. For example, the information about the reorganization, which in fact never happened. Actually, a new legal entity was created - the Supreme Court, which started operating on December 15, 2017. The law envisages that since the new Supreme Court began its work, the old Supreme Court of Ukraine and the highest specialized courts should cease. They did. They do not administer justice, all pending cases are forwarded to the new Supreme Court. That’s all. How would you generally assess the progress of judicial reform that has been going on for over 2 years? What are its intermediate results? It is not yet complete. The interim results are the establishment of the new Supreme Court, to which the trial parties do not have serious claims, the influence of the President and the Verkhovna Rada on the staff and disciplinary aspects of the functioning of the judicial system were abolished, as well as the comprehensive judicial immunity was canceled. In addition, new procedural codes have been adopted, containing extremely important and progressive things, for example, the introduction of the right of precedent-setting resolutions of the Supreme Court. Among other important achievements, I would highlight the new map of the courts of Ukraine, these are approved by the same Decree of the President of December 29, 2017. This will bring in new logistics, improve access of citizens to justice. Therefore, there are still many courts where not a single judge is left, such as the Yaremche district court of the Ivano-Frankivsk region or Zolochiv court of the Kharkiv region.
It is also important that a procedure for the qualification assessment of the entire judicial corps is conducted, and, according upon this procedure a considerable number of judges stops working because of incompliance with the position or on their own accord. And besides, the court became much more open, much more transparent. In my personal opinion, there are currently two crucial problems in the judicial system: the shortage of judges and, excuse me, awful infrastructure in some courts. Just imagine, when a citizen enters the courtroom, and the plaster from the ceiling is crumbling on his head, he can hardly be expected to have positive impressions of the court. I would not argue against this point at all. The lack of judges has really been formed over the past three years. The number of working judges has decreased from about 8,900 to 5,800. The purification of the judiciary, which began under pressure from the public, is fairly rapid. But training a new judge, ready to administer justice the next day after appointment, takes longer and requires more effort. Premise repairs are not outside of our terms of reference; it is better to address these issues to the State Judicial Administration. Let me briefly note that the sufficient funds for the maintenance of the judicial system became available only in the two last budget years. Much has been done during this time. But there are still many things ahead. Hence, can you say when the problem with the lack of judges will be solved and when all vacancies in courts are filled? I think that in late autumn we will conduct an examination for 1,000 future judges, check the written tasks and immediately hold competitions in local courts. The competition there is simple, it is not like the Supreme Court, there are only 2 criteria: the work experience and the assessment score. The judges who comply with both can be recruited without any problems That is, will it be completed by the beginning of the next year? I think we manage to do it early next year. I am sure that we will achieve 80% of what should be done within the reform at the end of spring next year. But judicial reform is also a reform of the bar. The relevant law has not yet been adopted, and I believe that the bar should also demonstrate the determination to change and the eagerness for these changes. The pace of reform of our colleagues in the prosecutor's office is also important. There is still plenty of work. But I do have optimism about it, albeit a cautious one.