REQUIREMENTS FOR HEADS OF LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES: AN ANALYSIS OF CURRENT LEGISLATIVE INITIATIVES

The article is dedicated to the analysis of current legislative initiatives aimed at improving and unifying the requirements for candidates seeking leadership positions in Ukraine’s law enforcement agencies.The author emphasizes that enhancing the requirements for candidates for managerial positions in law enforcement agencies should be viewed as a component of the comprehensive reform of Ukraine's law enforcement system. The professional competence of senior officials in such agencies and their overall effectiveness depend on the well-considered development and legal regulation of these requirements. In this context, particular attention is paid to the Draft Law of Ukraine «On Amendments to Certain Laws of Ukraine Regarding the Unification of Requirements for the Heads of Certain State Bodies» (Reg. No. 7654 dated August 10, 2022), which proposes to unify the requirements for such heads as the Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, the Head of the National Agency on Corruption Prevention, the Director of the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine, the Director of the State Bureau of Investigation, and the Head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office. The article analyzes some shortcomings of Draft Law No. 7654, including the inconsistency between its title and content; the attempt to normatively unify the requirements for heads of state bodies with differing legal statuses; the presence of both unifying and differentiating provisions regarding the requirements; and issues related to the legal clarity of certain terms in the draft law. As positive aspects of Draft Law No. 7654, the author notes the focus on developing a politically impartial leadership corps within Ukraine's law enforcement agencies, which possesses and uses not only the state language but also a foreign language in their professional activities. The article concludes that the unification of requirements for candidates for leadership positions in law enforcement agencies should take into account the specific legal status of the respective state bodies and should not exclude their objectively justified differentiation.