The institute of small cases in the civil procedure of Ukraine as an obstacle for the effective principles of the rule of law and the accessibility of justice

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the institute of civil procedural law — «minor cases». The purpose of the article is to find out whether this institution of civil procedural law an obstacle in the implementation of the principles of the rule of law and access to justice. In the course of the study, the practice of the ECtHR, the provisions of the domestic legislation of Ukraine and the acts of interpretation of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine were analysed. This made it possible to illustrate the lack of unity in understanding not only the essence of the principle of the rule of law, but also the content of the legal category «minor cases». The criteria for assigning civil cases to the «insignificant» category were analysed; it is determined that the procedural law identifies three criteria for classifying a case as insignificant: 1) a direct indication in the law (regardless of the price of the claim); 2) the marginal indicator of the price of the claim; 3) judicial discretion, taking into account the price of the claim. When analysing these criteria, a comparative legal characterization of the size of the living wage for able-bodied persons in relation to the size of the minimum wage was carried out. Along with the analysis of the practice of the ECtHR, this gave grounds for the conclusion that the establishment of the limitation of the right to cassation appeal of minor cases (with the exception of some exceptions) generally corresponds to international standards of judicial development and European recommendations on the introduction and improvement of the functioning of systems and procedures of appeal in civil and economic affairs. At the same time, it was established that clauses 1 and 5, part 6 of Art. 19 of the Code of Civil Procedure of Ukraine by the civil procedural legislation, the limit indicators of the price of the claim (one hundred and two hundred and fifty amounts of the subsistence minimum for able-bodied persons) violate a reasonable balance between the interests of the state (regarding the relief of the courts and the improvement of the functioning of systems and procedures of appeal in civil cases) and the needs of the protection of fundamental rights person, taking into account the property status of the main social and demographic groups of the population of Ukraine. And such a restriction is not compatible with the clause of Art. 6 of the European Conference, as there is no reasonable relationship of proportionality between the means used and the goal they are trying to achieve. Therefore, it is proposed to revise the marginal indicators of the price of the claim and the definition of its relevant indicator for the qualification of cases as insignificant.