JUSTICE ONLINE: HOW THE PROCEDURAL LAW HAS CHANGED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INTRODUCTION OF QUARANTINE

As you know, on April 2, the Law of Ukraine "On Amending Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine Intended to Ensure Additional Social and Economic Guarantees in Connection with the Spread of Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)" (hereinafter referred to as the Law) entered into force. In this article, we decided to focus on changes to the procedural legislation introduced by this Law.
In accordance with the Law, the Code of Administrative Procedure, Economic, Criminal and Civil Procedural Codes were amended to optimize legal proceedings for the quarantine period.
The most important of these changes are the following:

during quarantine, case participants can participate in a court session by video conference outside the courthouse using their own technical means;
confirmation of the identity of the participant in the case in the case of the video conference is carried out using an electronic signature, and if the person does not have such a signature, then in the manner determined by the Law of Ukraine "On the Unified State Demographic Register and documents proving the citizenship of Ukraine, identifying the person or her special status" or State Judicial Administration Ukraine;
during the quarantine period, the procedural periods continue for the duration of such quarantine;
the period established by the court in its decision cannot be less than the term of the quarantine;

The first two points should be discussed in more detail. The fact is that the State Judicial Administration, by its order No. 169 of 08.04.2020, approved the Procedure for working with video-conferencing technical equipment during a court session in administrative, civil and business processes with the participation of parties outside the courthouse. This document contains the minimum and optimal requirements for technical means, as well as the procedure for video conferencing.
In order to participate in the court session in the videoconference mode, the case participant must first register using his own electronic signature in the system and check his own technical means for compliance with the technical requirements defined for working with the system selected for the videoconference. If a participant does not have an electronic signature (or the system does not allow registration using an electronic signature), then he must first register in the system using the username and password or using other means of registration provided by the selected system.
The decision on the possibility of confirming the identity of the participant in the case who does not have an electronic signature, as well as the decision on the election of the system that will be used to conduct the court session in the videoconference mode, is made by the judge in the proceedings of which the case is being processed.
The case participant submits an application for participation in the court session by video conference outside the courtroom, no later than five days before the court session.
Some important changes were made to the Code of Criminal Procedure, namely, in the case of impossibility to determine the investigating judge in the relevant court (except for the High Anti-Corruption Court), the local court makes a motivated submission of the petition, which should be considered by the investigating judge for consideration in another court within the jurisdiction of one court of appeal or to a court within the jurisdiction of various courts of appeal.
We will closely monitor the effectiveness of the above innovations, which, so far, according to the reviews of the parties involved, do not live up to expectations.