“Conveyor belt” approach to reforms

Relations of the current government with Ukrainian religious groups were not successful from the very beginning. For approximately a year after being elected, President Yanukovych did not have any meetings with the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations. And during official events and anniversaries, the country rulers could often be seen in the company of representatives of only one church: Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Moscow Patriarchate.

Soon, the situation started to change. The head of state started meeting with the Council and inviting representatives of main churches to public events. The last meeting with the Council of Churches happened in the middle of October, and joint commemoration of the Holodomor victims by the government and religious figures took place in late November this year.

However, one more problem appeared in relations between government and the church. Recently, Yanukovych signed a draft law No. 10221, which introduced high-profile amendments to the Law of Ukraine “On the Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations.” In particular, the experts think that the changes will make registration of religious organizations more complicated. This is going to happen due to establishment of two inconsistent procedures, required for obtaining the status of a legal entity: registration of a religious organization’s statutes (this can be done in the Ministry of Culture or oblast state administration) and its state registration (in the Ukrainian State Registry).

Besides, the law gives a right to control the activity of religious organizations to a large number of state government bodies, among them being prosecutor’s offices, the Ministry of Culture, other ministries and departments, local state administrations, and bodies of local self-government. The hastily adopted innovations do not provide clearly specified authority for the abovementioned government bodies and permitted ways to carry out their controlling functions.

As the Institute for Religious Freedom representatives state, by adopting these changes, the parliamentary majority ignored the position of the religious community and the agreements, settled between the Council of Churches and Religious Organizations with the author of the project, representative of the president in the parliament, Yurii Miroshnychenko, and the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine represented by the first deputy minister Inna Yemelianova. Moreover, the president signed a draft law, despite his promise made to heads of churches and religious organizations that there will be no amendments to legislation in case of absence of support from confessions.

But right after the information about Yanukovych’s verdict appeared, one more piece of news was released: the president demands to immediately make amendments to the just signed law that would enhance the freedom of conscience. And he even entrusted the Cabinet of Ministers with preparation of favorable conditions for religious organizations’ activity. What does this all mean? What dangers do amendments to the Law “On the Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations” contain? What is the present-day situation? We discussed this with church representatives and experts.

COMMENTARIES

Yurii MIROSHNYCHENKO, MP, the president’s representative in the Verkhovna Rada:

“A whole set of laws, starting with the law on the Cabinet of Ministers and amendments to a number of laws that regulate activity of ministries and other central executive bodies, has been adopted recently due to the process of the administrative reform implementation in Ukraine.

“Considering the large amount of changes in regulation of these organs’ activity, discussions concerning some provisions of the law, related to the government bodies’ interaction with other entities, including religious organizations, appeared in Ukrainian society. After the law’s adoption in the first reading, a working group was created. We invited representatives of the Council of Churches and other entities that were interested in the dialog concerning adoption of the set of six laws to join the working group. We have carried out a meeting and produced a common vision of this matter with representatives of religious organizations. We also invited the Ministry of Justice, which took an active part in the finishing of this draft law. So, we received a jointly modified law that was supposed to be adopted in the second reading. Unfortunately, the first wording of this law was adopted. After this happened, we have gathered representatives of the Council of Churches and Religious Organizations and developed mutual approaches to either create a common concept of a draft law, which is now prepared by the Ministry of Justice (with the consideration of changes to all those six laws, required for their significant improvement, since the first wordings of some of them were adopted), or submit a separate draft law, which will only contain amendments of the law on the freedom of conscience and religious organizations. We have a common vision of this matter, and I am ready to sign and register a corresponding draft law. The only part we have to go through now is the coordination procedure. I think that representatives of religious communities have to be the main initiators of the new amendments. At the moment, lawyers who represent various churches and organizations are working on necessary amendments with the Ministry of Justice.

“The matter why this draft law was adopted so quickly is out of my sphere. I do not add the corresponding documents to the agenda, this is done by the conciliation council. I can only assume that it was done this way, because the reforms program required legislation adoption and completion of the administrative reform on the level of central government bodies and executive branch. Besides, the cadence of the parliament sixth convocation was coming to an end, and this law had to be adopted. Considering all these factors, the conciliation council made a decision to add it to the agenda.

“I do not see anything critically wrong in this set of laws. Overall 85 percent of regulations of the adopted laws will significantly improve functioning of the central executive bodies, and we need to work on the remaining 15 percent by submitting another law. The president had to face a complicated choice. But since the Constitution was not violated by this law, the head of state did not have any reasons to refuse signing it. Yanukovych decided not to apply politics to the organization of executive power. He chose a different way, the ratification of this law, so the document could enter into force and the government bodies would be able to reform themselves according to it. Considering the details that relate to interaction between government organs and other entities, including religious organizations, they should be worked upon. This choice is absolutely reasonable since it gives an opportunity to not lose the positive aspects of this law and be thrown back to the past, but finish the reforms and correct the law’s imperfections.”

Father Yevstratii (ZORIA), Bishop of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Kyiv Patriarchate):

“The ratification of amendments to the law on freedom of conscience is an example of incomplete dialog between the government and the church and insufficient mechanisms for its implementation. Of course, the dialog does exist, and so do the mechanisms. It should be mentioned that we express the opinion of confessions united in the Council of Churches and Religious Organizations, which represents 95 percent of the religious network of Ukraine, the main faith branches and denominations. So, we presented a consolidated opinion on this draft law, but unfortunately, it was not taken into consideration. This is the evidence of the fact that the mechanism does not work properly.

“Of course, the president of Ukraine also understands this. Right after the decision to make amendments to the law was made public, the head of state ordered the Cabinet of Ministers to prepare corrections of the adopted changes and the current situation jointly with representatives of churches and religious organizations. It should be reminded that in 2010, the president announced the implementation of the administrative reform, which foresees amendments to more than 40 laws, and the law on freedom of conscience is only one of the many.

“Considering the obvious instability which is unavoidable after the parliament convocation change, the matter of making changes to the law could have remained unsolved. That is why the president decided to sign this draft law, which we consider to be scandalous. But the meeting of the working group that included representatives of churches and religious organizations took place in the Ministry of Culture last week already. We discussed this issue and have reached a common opinion: the first and the fastest thing we can do at this stage is to finish working on the draft law, which would be submitted for the Verkhovna Rada’s consideration, relate to the matter of church and reliligious organizations only, and would bring the law on the freedom of conscience to the wording that was present before the amendments. Such draft law would be easy and fast to prepare, since we already have the conceptual groundwork of what we would like to see in this law.

“After that, we would be able to get to deeper problems. The council of churches has been asking to adopt a concept of relations between the state and the church, which would become such legislation framework, as, for example, concept of domestic and foreign politicies, or concept of defense, for a long time. Such concepts exist in specific areas of state activity, and corresponding legislation has to be present in the sphere of freedom of conscience. This would benefit the perfection of relations and improvement of realization of the constitutional right for freedom of consciousness, action, and religion. We hope that we will finally be heard.

“Also we put faith in cooperation with MPs. We have already talked to representatives of different factions and expressed our desires concerning the organization of cooperation. I hope that we will receive some feedback and they will develop a stable mechanism of cooperation with the Council of Churches and Religious Organizations. Therefore, when the draft laws that relate to matters of conscience or religions will be submitted to the Verkhovna Rada, MPs will be clearly informed on the Council’s position, views of separate confessions and experts on suggested innovations. MPs will be able to share this information with their colleagues in factions and support useful draft laws while rejecting or changing the harmful ones, like the one we have been talking about.

“It is clear that every bureaucrat thinks that the more unified the procedures are, the better the law is. They wanted to make all legal entities follow the single procedure and avoid diversity and different interpretations, and ensure the control of the process through a corresponding registration service of the Ministry of Justice. However, churches and religious organizations belong to a special kind of legal entities. They are not to be treated according to the same standards as the rest of the legal entities.

“A certain incongruity was revealed when this law appeared. Firstly, the draft law was prepared by the Ministry of Justice, and we have to conduct the dialog through the Ministry of Culture. After the voting in the first reading, we started talking to everyone: the MP Miroshnychenko, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Justice, and agreed upon details that were to be submitted for the second reading. But since the parliament was busy with other affairs, and its working period was so close to the end, somebody in the Verkhovna Rada decided that the voting on the draft law should happen before the end of the cadence, or its further fate would be unknown.

“This draft law had to be passed, so it was voted for in one minute without the second reading. Otherwise, the administrative reform would not function properly. The lack of coordination between different branches of government and state representatives led to the situation in which churches and religious organizations suffered and turned out to be unprotected. I think that this will be a lesson for representatives of the government as well as churches: such matters should not be treated thoughtlessly. The state has to treat the dialog with the church and solution of problems related to freedom of conscience in the legislative field with more attention and expertise.”

Father Heorhii (KOVALENKO), Bishop of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church:

“Ukrainian Orthodox Church is concerned with the complication of the registration procedure which will happen when the new law enters into force. We hope that work on legislation improvement will be continued. Unfortunately, the approved draft law did not take the opinion of the Council of Churches and Religious Organizations into consideration, though it was promised it would. The church has its visions, about which the God said in the Gospels: ‘Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.’ We shall live according to the existing legislation, but at the same time, we shall work on its improvement.”

Father Ihor (ISICHENKO), Bishop of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church:

“Ratification of this law reflects the tendency of the current government of Ukraine, when the protectionist policy is implemented along with such legislation system which would give an ability to regulate tax pressure on different confessions, depending on the level of their loyalty to the government.”