Ukraine currently has approximately 350 political parties and the concern is that the Ministry of Justice lacks resources to check whether all registered political parties comply with legal requirements.

Parties have a way of getting around the law. This is the reason for the great number of parties that exist only on paper. The situation was evolving for years, as prior to each election we saw a wave, a surge in registration numbers of new parties. We need some conceptual changes in the system of control over parties’ compliance with legal requirements.

Today, the quality of parliamentary processes is often associated with the inadequate election system. However, the law carries only an instrumental function, it is a mechanism to slightly improve or devalue the situation. Most important is the level of political culture of communities and elites. Quality of parliamentary processes will be  determined by the level of people’s awareness, candidates’ hidden motives. Society must ask questions: who is the candidate, what does he seek, does he represent a particular person, or is he an independent law-maker? We have to ask ourselves as well. Because after the election campaign of 2014, many new deputies emerged, but they did not turn out to be who they positioned themselves as. The issue of the quality of parliamentarism is a deep one, it cannot be associated with a certain law, — it is connected with political culture that needs to be developed.

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