Privileges for prospective university students, absentees in the Parliament, and licenses for medical university staff: new bills for the Verkhovna Rada to consider

Status: included on the parliamentary agenda. MPs can still submit alternative draft bills.

The President submitted bill 3734 last week, but by the time it was included on the agenda it had been substantially amended. In the first version, enrollment privileges were supposed to be granted not just for prospective students from TOT, but also for children of those who have died in the line of duty (war veterans, national guardsmen, police officers, border patrol officers, state emergency servicemen, and state security servicemen) and children of medics who died of coronavirus

Who is affected: Ukrainian citizens, prospective university students from the temporarily occupied territories, other prospective students, and university teaching staff.

What does it change:

• prospective students registered on the temporarily occupied territories of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts or frontline localities will be admitted to universities without competition (the number, though, is limited by quota), in particular they will not pass external independent evaluation
• prospective students from the temporarily occupied territories will be able to enroll for pre-entry university courses for free and be admitted there as IDPs afterwards.

What is wrong:

• the Constitution unambiguously prohibits to introduce privileges or restrictions based on place of residence
• students with such privileges will not be encouraged to study properly, since they are going to be judged by their place of registration and not exam results. As a result, universities will get less motivated students
• it is easy to abuse such special admission procedure: prospective students willing to bypass the EIE will need to just change their place of registration.
• the submitted bill had been substantially rewritten before it was included on the parliamentary agenda. It is not against regulations to do such a thing, but this is still bad lawmaking. Such a move makes legislative process less transparent and gives away the fact that the President does not have a well-thought-out policy on the matter.

Status: adopted in the first reading, MPs can submit their amendments before the second reading.

Who is affected: MPs.

What does it change:

• the bill introduces a list of acceptable reasons for MPs to skip plenary and committee meetings: executing orders from the Parliament, parliamentary committee, or the Speaker of Verkhovna Rada, work trips, medical treatment, temporary disability etc.
• MPs will get penalties for skipping meetings. If an MP does not attend plenary or committee meetings without an acceptable reason, their payment and reimbursements will be cut by 30 to 50%.

What is wrong: MPs want to fight the consequences instead of addressing the real issue. Low attendance and discipline should not be regulated by law, but remain a matter of MPs’ and their parties’ political accountability.

Alternative solution: to change the voting procedure by allowing the Parliament to adopt ordinary laws by simple majority vote. That will encourage MPs from both coalition and opposition to attend plenary meetings.

Status: included on the parliamentary agenda. MPs can still submit alternative draft bills.

Who is affected: patients, doctors, hospital management, and medical universities teaching staff.

What does it change: academic and pedagogical staff employed by medical higher education establishments (including postgraduate research) will be allowed to work as physicians.

Why the bill is important: presently, medical university professors and researchers are not allowed to work as physicians. If they want to practice medicine, they have to find employment as doctors and work in the spare time.

What is right:

• there will be more highly competent medical personnel in Ukrainian hospitals
• quality of medical services provided by medical universities staff will become higher when professors and researchers are allowed to practice medicine without unnecessary restrictions.