On November 27, 2024, the First Senate deliberated the cases upon the constitutional complaints of Bohdan Kondratchuk and Mykola Baranovskyi in the public part of the plenary sessions in the form of written proceedings.
During the plenary session, the Judge-Rapporteur in the case, Viktor Kryvenko, outlined the content of the constitutional complaints and the applicants’ substantiation.
The Judge-Rapporteur stated that the applicants had appealed to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to verify the compliance of paragraph 3 of Section II “Final and Transitional Provisions” of the Law of Ukraine “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine” No. 1774-VIII dated December 6, 2016 (hereinafter, Law No. 1774), as amended, with the Constitution of Ukraine.
The impugned provisions of Law No. 1774 stipulate that the minimum wage after the entry into force of this Law shall not be applied as a calculated value for determining the salaries and wages of employees and other payments, except for the calculation of the annual amount of funding for the statutory activities of political parties; until the laws of Ukraine are amended to provide for the non-application of the minimum wage as a calculated value, it shall be applied in the amount of the subsistence minimum for able-bodied persons established as of January 1 of the calendar year.
From the content of the constitutional complaints and the materials attached to them, it is clear that Bohdan Kondratchuk and Mykola Baranovskyi are pensioners who do not work, are registered with the Main Department of the Pension Fund of Ukraine in Zhytomyr Oblast (hereinafter, the “Department”), live in the territory of radioactive contamination, and have the status of a person affected by the Chornobyl disaster.
The authors of the petitions state that as a result of the application of paragraph 3 of Section II “Final and Transitional Provisions” of Law No. 1774, there was an actual decrease in the amount of the supplement to his pension compared to the previously established payments provided for in Article 39 of the Law of Ukraine “On the Status and Social Protection of Citizens Affected by the Chornobyl Disaster” No. 796-XII dated February 28, 1991 (hereinafter, “Law No. 796”), as amended. They believe that this indicates a narrowing of the content and scope of existing rights, violation of property rights, the principle of legal certainty, and equality of rights.
During the plenary sessions, the Judge-Rapporteur informed that the Court had a number of cases pending on similar issues. He also noted that letters of inquiry had been sent to the President of Ukraine, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, and academic institutions with a request to express their positions on the issues raised in the constitutional complaints.
The First Senate examined the case file and proceeded to the in-camera part of the plenary sessions.
The video recording of the plenary session upon the constitutional complaint of Bohdan Kondratchuk is available at: https://sv1.ccu.gov.ua/video.
The video recording of the plenary session upon the constitutional complaint of Mykola Baranovskyi is available at: https://sv1.ccu.gov.ua/video.
