Review

In the article it is examined stages of implementation into national criminal procedure the European features such as optionality. The author analyzes the norms of Ukrainian legislation and international legal documents regulating the realization of opportunity to dispose rights of parties of criminal proceedings. The author also draws attention to the practice of the European Court of Human Rights regarding the inadmissibility of restricting parties in the use of their procedural rights.

The author examines the main legal acts adopted since Ukraine's independence, which envisage the process of reform of criminal justice.

It is analyzed concepts that guarantee the rights of participants of criminal proceedings particularly from the standpoint of the principles of optionality of criminal proceedings, adversarial nature of parties, victim’s rights, elimination of the indictment deviation in court activity, expansion of judicial control over restrictions of constitutional rights and freedoms during pre-trial proceedings and appeal of investigator’s and prosecutor’s decisions to court.

The article focuses on the main problems of interpreting the content of optionality of criminal proceedings at the national legislation level and its relation with other principles of the criminal proceedings.

The author analyzes the conditions and aspects of optionality of criminal proceedings in the operation of procedural supervisors (prosecutors) in accordance with the requirements of the current criminal procedural legislation of Ukraine. The norms of the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine are revealed to illustrate how the dispositive principle of the criminal process is implemented.

At the same time, it is investigated compliance of the principles of national criminal justice with the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 1950 based on examples of individual court decisions.

It is emphasized that optionality of criminal proceedings is a democratic basis for the construction of a criminal proceedings. Its development testifies the establishment of a democratic state and the introduction of common European principles in the process of reforming of domestic criminal justice.

Keywords: optionality, principles, reform of criminal procedure, adversarial nature of parties.