European Standards of Criminal Justice and Their Impact on the Reform of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine

Abstract

The article examines European standards of criminal justice and their significance for the development of criminal procedural legislation in Ukraine. The purpose of this study is to undertake a comprehensive theoretical and legal analysis of these standards, to determine their content, structure, and legal nature, as well as to clarify the specifics of their influence on the reform of criminal procedural regulation.

Methods. The methodological framework of the study is based on general scientific and special legal methods. The systemic method made it possible to consider European standards as an integral legal construct and to identify their structural elements. The formal legal method was used to analyse the provisions of the criminal procedural legislation of Ukraine and to assess their compliance with European approaches. The comparative legal method was applied to compare national regulation with international standards. The method of case law analysis was employed to generalise the legal positions of the European Court of Human Rights and to identify typical violations in criminal proceedings.

Results. The study establishes that European standards of criminal justice constitute a system of principles, procedural safeguards, and requirements governing criminal proceedings, formed within international legal instruments and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. Their key components are identified, and their role as guiding benchmarks for law enforcement is substantiated. It is demonstrated that the criminal procedural legislation of Ukraine generally reflects these standards at the normative level, particularly in ensuring the right to defence, judicial control, admissibility of evidence, and compliance with reasonable time limits. At the same time, a systemic gap between the formal legal framework and its practical implementation is revealed, which manifests itself in the formal application of procedural safeguards and inconsistency in law enforcement practice. The necessity of improving criminal procedural legislation is substantiated through ensuring the effective functioning of relevant norms and enhancing the quality of their application.