Reform of the Security Service of Ukraine in Accordance with Recommendation Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe No. 1402

The article deals with the status and functions of the Security Service of Ukraine. A systematic analysis of the Ukrainian legislation has been carried out and its conformity with the Recommendation PACE 1402 (1999) Control of internal security services in the Council of Europe member states has been determined. The purpose of reforming the Security Service of Ukraine is to transform it into a special service capable of effectively protecting state sovereignty, constitutional order and territorial integrity of Ukraine. Usually there are three basic - "classic" powers of the intelligence services: information gathering, analysis of collected information and counterintelligence. But current Ukrainian legislation, along with "classic" counterintelligence functions, entrusts the Security Service of Ukraine with the functions of fight against corruption and organized crime, as well as economic crimes. The author considers that the presence of such powers by the Security Service of Ukraine does not contradict Recommendation PACE 1402. Firstly, the jurisdiction of the Security Service of Ukraine is rather limited. Secondly, the risk of abuse of authority and therefore the risk of human rights violations are directly related to the form of organization and the presence of certain powers in the special services, the PACE Recommendation suggests that domestic security services do not allow criminal investigations, arrests or detentions of persons, and that they do not participate in the fight against organized crime, except in very specific cases where organized crime is a clear danger to a free democratic state. The second issue is the demilitarization of the special service. Most of the staff of the Security Service of Ukraine are military personnel. According to the author, this is not in direct contradiction with the Recommendation PACE 1402, because the Recommendation PACE 1402 states that they internal security services should preferably not be organized within a military structure. Nor should civilian security services be organized in a military or semi-military way. At the same time, the Security Service of Ukraine is a state-level special-purpose body with law enforcement functions - this provision is not in line with the PACE Recommendation, since clause 3 of paragraph B states that internal security services should not be authorized to perform law enforcement tasks. According to the author, the only sure way to improve the situation is to comprehensively reform the legislation of Ukraine, taking into account the Recommendations PACE 1402.