Authors of constitutional submission on NEURC members appointment expect soonest hearing in Constitutional Court
KYIV. Nov 11 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The parliamentarians who are the authors of the submission of unconstitutionality of the appointment by the President of the country of members of the National Energy and Utilities Regulatory Commission (NEURC), hope that the Constitutional Court of Ukraine will not delay the consideration of this case as significant for the country.
"These decrees have led to the fact that today, its [the commission's] actions are unconstitutional. It is necessary to immediately make relevant legislative decisions – managerial, organizational, and correct the situation," MP (from the Batkivschyna faction) Oleksiy Kucherenko said at a press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine agency on Wednesday.
According to him, 50 MPs, who on November 3 sent to the Constitutional Court a submission about the unconstitutionality of decrees on the appointment of NEURC members and some provisions of the law on NEURC, consider four decrees of Head of State Volodymyr Zelensky and three decrees of fifth President Petro Poroshenko on the appointment of members commission as unconstitutional.
According to Kucherenko, the decrees were issued in excess of their powers and violate the principle of distribution of state power. He said that the submission is about the unconstitutionality of the provisions of the law dated December 19, 2019 on amendments to certain legislative acts of Ukraine on ensuring constitutional principles in energy and utilities sectors.
In turn, MP Liudmyla Buimister said: "It is important to make the regulator truly independent, and what has been done, all the mechanisms that are laid down in the law on NEURC contradict the principles of independence of the regulator. It has become a central executive agency, has become absolutely dependent on illegal decisions of different branches of government."
MP Valentyn Nalyvaichenko (the Batkivschyna faction) said that an investigative commission is working in the parliament. He said that the regulator "started to violate the legislation of Ukraine."
"Today we sent an appeal to the leadership of the NABU [National Anti-Corruption Bureau], SBI [the State Bureau of Investigations], SBU [the State Security Service]. We pointed to evidence of violations by [Valeriy] Tarasiuk himself and his subordinates of two Articles 364 and 369 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine […] abuse of office and abuse of influence," the MP said.