The Chair of the Committee on Ukraine's Integration into the EU stated
this during a webinar on parliamentary oversight of defence and
security. She is convinced that there is already an understanding in
Ukraine that civilian oversight and control of the security and defence
sectors are extremely important to build a truly successful and capable
armed forces and law enforcement agencies. The main thing in this
process, according to Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, is to implement the
documents that have already been adopted: “The National Security Law,
related laws that have already been adopted in this convocation or
adopted in the first reading are extremely important, but their
practical implementation is also important and it is important to see
how this parliamentary oversight and parliamentary control actually
works”.
The Chair of the Committee named the areas where parliamentary control
over security and defence could and should be exercised. These include
oversight of expenditures in the security and defence sectors, approval
of key legal documents, in particular strategies, as well as plans for
the personnel of certain forces and logistics of the Armed Forces and
the defence sector. Parliament, according to the Chair of the
Committee, should also be able to correct, if necessary, mistakes made
by the executive branch. However, today it does not always work
effectively in Ukraine.
“We already have a serious, meaningful and well spelled-out legal
framework for the use of parliamentary oversight and parliamentary
control, but we have not yet reached the point where the practice of
exercising parliamentary control is really effective. So the question
arises — how exactly will the new law on the Security Service of
Ukraine help, if we have such cases today, when one ex-deputy head of
the Security Service orders the murder of another one? Or when you and
I have been talking about civilian defence ministers for years and step
on the same rake every time we get another general who allegedly takes
off his shoulder straps and becomes, ostensibly, a civilian minister,
but in fact, he is not”.
The Chair of the Committee noted that the main thing at the moment was
to move from documents to implementation, so that parliamentary control
worked in practice, not only at the level of regulations.