REPRESENTATION OF THE STATE’S INTERESTS IN COURT AS A FUNCTION OF THE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE: FEATURES OF LEGISLATIVE REGULATIONS
Authors: Stefanchuk M. M. 
Published: October 2024

The article highlights some features of the legislative regulation the representation of the state’s interests in court by the public prosecutor’s office, the peculiarity of which periodically become the objects of review by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, initiated by interested parties, who in current conditions demand revision of such regulation for its compliance with the principles of the rule of law.
The purpose of the article is to highlight the peculiarities of the legislative regulation of the representative function of the prosecutor’s office through the prism of establishing its compliance with European standards of the prosecutor’s office activities in the researched field, the method of legislative determination of the scope of the representation of the state’s interests by the prosecutor’s office, the legitimate purpose of adopting legislative provisions on prosecutorial representation, ensuring the implementation of the representation of state’s interests in court by the prosecutor’s office in exceptional cases, the expediency of introducing changes to the legally defined mechanism of implementation of the representative function by the prosecutor’s office regarding the substantiation by the prosecutor of the grounds for such activities, as well as highlighting one’s own vision regarding its further development.
It is stated that the constitutional and legal regulation of the prosecutor’s office function of representing the interests of the State in court is characterized by a number of legal categories which are evaluative in nature, and which, given the lack of their legislative definition, are understood in the legal positions of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine and in the practice of the relevant entities applying law, mainly, judicial and prosecutorial practice.
It is established that the updated constitutional and legal status of the prosecutor’s office in Ukraine in terms of determining the scope of its powers in activities outside the criminal justice sphere through the prism of the function of representing the State’s interests in court in exceptional cases and in accordance with the procedure established by law embodies the European standards of the prosecutor’s office, whose defining mission in this area is to represent general or public interests, protect human rights and fundamental freedoms, and ensure the rule of law, which corresponds to the legally defined purpose of public prosecutor’s office in Ukraine.
It is proved that the method of constitutional definition of exceptional cases of the prosecutor’s office’s function of representation of the State’s interests in court indicates that the legislator does not intend to limit their legislative consolidation to the limits of a specific special law and does not exclude the possibility of their consolidation in the provisions of other laws, since the list of these cases cannot be determined in advance, but should be determined in accordance with the interests which require protection in a particular historical period.
It is proposed to apply a balanced approach to introducing changes to the legislatively defined mechanism for exercising the representative function by the prosecutor’s office with due regard for the achievements of judicial and prosecutorial practice of its application, so as not to make it impossible to protect the interests of the State by means of prosecutorial representation.