European Court of Human Rights convicts Ukraine for hindering the independence of its judiciary system.

On 22 July 2021, the European Court of Human Rights condemned the State of Ukraine for violating Article 6 § 1 (right of access to court) and article 8 (right to respect for private life) of the European Convention on Human Rights in the case Gumenyuk and others v. Ukraine. The case concerns the attempts of the Ukrainian government to target and hinder the job of the judges of the Ukrainian Supreme Court by using the legislative amendments of 2016. This legislative reform extinguished the Supreme Court and removed the judges from their positions, replacing the Supreme Court with an entire team of new judges in December 2017. In this sense, the judges, who were also the applicants in this case, lodged an application before the European Court to question the breach of their guarantee of judicial immobility, as they were not allowed to continue to occupy their roles as judges of the Supreme Court. With respect to the European Court, it held that the right of access to a court was a fundamental procedural right for the protection of members of the judiciary, and the applicants should have been able to go to court with their allegations. Moreover, it also concluded that banning judges from their roles also affected their private lives, and therefore, it constituted an attack against their right to respect for their private lives. Such arbitrary removal of the applicants from their roles contradicts the principle of non-removal of judges, a key element of the independence of the judiciary .