10 Interesting Facts about Ukraine’s Constitution

Ukraine celebrates the 27th anniversary of the adoption of its Constitution on June 28.

Constitution Day is a national holiday, although in 2023, it will not be observed as a day off due to the ongoing state of war.

On June 28, 1996, at 9:20 a.m., 315 members of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament voted in favor of the Ukrainian Constitution. They had been working on the Constitution the entire previous day and throughout the night.

The result was the first Constitution of an independent Ukrainian state, recognized worldwide. NV has collected 10 interesting facts about the Constitution of Ukraine:

1. The adoption of the Constitution of Ukraine took nearly six years after the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine (July 16, 1990) and almost five years after the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine. The adoption of the document was hindered by the constant confrontation between the President and the Verkhovna Rada against the backdrop of a prolonged socioeconomic crisis in the country.

2. Over the course of six years, there were 15 drafts of the Constitution of Ukraine. In addition to the Constitutional Commission, political parties proposed their own drafts. The Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists' project did not provide for autonomy of Crimea, while the Communists suggested retaining the name Ukrainian SSR, restoring the Soviet form of governance, and entering a new union. They also aimed to limit the President's powers.

3. The most contentious issues during the discussion of the Constitution projects were:

• Distribution of powers between branches of government

• State symbols

• Private property

• Status of Crimea

• Status of the Russian language
  

4. Active work on the final draft of the Constitution of Ukraine lasted for three months. The Constitutional Commission worked on it for three consecutive months, 13 hours a day, from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. In March, the Constitutional Commission recommended the draft for consideration by the Verkhovna Rada. It was included in the agenda on April 2 and, after two months of revision, was passed in the first reading. Approximately 6,000 amendments were made to the Constitution project during the preparation for the second reading.

5. The Verkhovna Rada finalized all provisions of the Constitution continuously for 24 hours. On June 27, 1996, the deputies decided to discuss the draft Basic Law in a single session, without breaks. They voted on each article separately and then on entire sections. The vote on the Constitution as a whole took place at 9:20 a.m. on June 28, 1996.

6. "We have a Constitution!" – these were the first words spoken by the Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Oleksandr Moroz, after the adoption of the Basic Law.

7. A week before the adoption of the Constitution, on June 21, 1996, an addition by Moroz was adopted, stating that the exclusive right to define and change the constitutional order of Ukraine belongs to the people, and the state and its officials cannot usurp this right.

8. The Verkhovna Rada has made changes to the Constitution eight times. Some subsequent amendments repealed previous ones. The most recent change occurred on September 3, 2019, when MPs stripped themselves of parliamentary immunity.

9. Shortly before the adoption of the Constitution, President Leonid Kuchma issued a decree to hold an all-Ukrainian referendum on the adoption of the Constitution on September 25, 1996. However, after the Verkhovna Rada adopted the Constitution on June 28, he canceled this decree.

10. Kuchma was not present in the Rada for the entire 24 hours while MPs considered the final draft of the Constitution of Ukraine. He arrived in the session hall a few minutes before the vote on the Basic Law as a whole and delivered a speech, calling the adoption of the Constitution a historic event.

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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine