Discussion criminal law panel

within the framework of the VII Kharkiv International Legal Forum

“Criminal Law of Ukraine in the Period of Global Challenges: From Martial Law to Postwar Revival”

September 29, 2023, from 10.00 to 14.00

Format: mixed, face-to-face and remote – one part of the participants, including national speakers, will gather offline (the location will be agreed and announced later), the other part, including foreign speakers, will join online, using the Zoom service.

Moderator: Yurii Ponomarenko, Doctor of Law, Head of the Department of Criminal Law at Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University

The times of global challenges that the Ukrainian people, the state created by them, and all our governmental and social institutions are currently experiencing have put forward special, previously unexplored requirements for criminal law. Criminal law regulation in Ukraine, which for decades has been carried out in the pro-Soviet paradigm of “criminal law prohibition,” is undergoing an irreversible process of transformation to a paradigm of determining the grounds, limits and manner of exercising the state’s powers to apply criminal law remedies to persons who have committed criminal offenses. This new conceptual approach is the basis for the draft of the new Criminal Code developed by a working group within the Legal Reform Commission under the President of Ukraine.

The discussion panel will focus on three blocks of criminal law issues, namely:

1. approximation of the criminal legislation of Ukraine to the requirements of the EU acquis communautaire as a necessary and indispensable condition for Ukraine’s membership in the EU;
2. inevitability of criminal liability for criminal offenses committed by the Russian political leadership and military command during the armed aggression against Ukraine;
3. criminal and legal issues of reintegration of the de-occupied Ukrainian territories (problems of liability for collaboration and other crimes against the foundations of national security in the temporarily occupied territories, recognition of the verdicts of occupation courts, etc.).