The Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Ruslan Stefanchuk, announced on June 9 that the parliament had received an important and, in his words, generally positive legal conclusion from the Council of Europe regarding the draft of the new Civil Code No. 15150. The analytical company YouControl, which familiarized itself with the same document, proposes a different interpretation and calls the conclusion critical of a number of provisions of the project. The discrepancy in assessments concerns, first of all, the new block of digital rights, which the authors of the code are trying to enshrine in Ukrainian legislation for the first time.
Origin of the Conclusion
The document has the official marking LEX_2026_14 and was prepared by the Department of Cooperation on Freedom of Expression of the Department of Democratic Institutions and Freedoms of the Council of Europe. In the accompanying letter dated June 2, 2026, signed by the head of the department, Alina Tatarenko, it is stated that the analysis was carried out in response to the official appeal of the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Freedom of Speech, Yaroslav Yurchyshyn. European experts focused on those parts of the project that regulate the circulation of information, the work of open data platforms, and the protection of privacy, so the further remarks concern specific articles of the code.
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Collection of Open Data and Article 336
The central object of criticism, which YouControl points out, was Article 336 of the project, which introduces the concept of “right to digital personal space”, or digital privacy. The authors have attributed digital correspondence, metadata of communication, search queries, browsing history on the Internet, and geodata to this space, and Article 336 allows the processing of all this information only with the consent of the person. In the conclusion, according to YouControl, the experts of the Council of Europe warn that the requirement to collect data exclusively with consent is capable of blocking the work of open data platforms, complicating journalistic investigations, and narrowing the possibilities of controlling corruption and searching for information in open sources. The European side characterizes such an approach as narrower and more stringent than the general European standards for the protection of personal data.
Privacy for Legal Entities and Articles 345 and 353
A separate block of remarks concerns the attempt to extend the right to privacy to companies. Article 345, for the first time in Ukrainian law, tries to enshrine the right of a legal entity to a digital image, which includes accounts, pages, and digital profiles in social networks and government systems. Article 353 develops this logic and extends to companies the right to digital privacy, prohibiting the processing of data about their digital image without direct consent. The experts of the Council of Europe, as YouControl reports, question the very construction of privacy for legal entities, since a company is an artificially created legal structure without signs of a living person. In the conclusion, it is noted that the collection and analysis of information about companies belong to public functions – maintaining state registers, checking counterparties before transactions, and combating corruption, – and the requirement to obtain the company’s consent for the processing of its data is called practically unworkable by the European side.
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Right to be Forgotten and Article 328
Article 328 enshrines the right to be forgotten, which allows a natural person to demand the removal, depersonalization, or destruction of information about themselves from publicly available sources, as well as de-indexing – the cessation of issuing links in search systems. The basis for this may be the person’s statement that the information is outdated, incomplete, or has lost public interest. The remarks of the Council of Europe, as reported by the company, are focused on the wording “loss of public interest”, which has no clear criteria. European experts refer to the practice of the European Court of Human Rights and remind of the need to balance the person’s desire to delete data about themselves with the right of society to have access to information about past events, including through digital and newspaper archives. Without such criteria, the conclusion warns, the instrument can be used by figures of judicial affairs or former participants of sanctioned companies to remove historical corporate ties.
Exceptions for Public Figures and Journalism
A running thesis of the conclusion, which YouControl draws attention to, is the lack of exceptions for officials, politicians, and other influential figures, as well as for journalistic activities and the mandatory public disclosure of data. The system of digital rights in articles 321, 328, 332, 336, 345, and 353 is built around the individual will of the data subject. The principle of increased openness of public figures is not enshrined in the text. The European side notes that the life and activities of officials have traditionally been subject to stricter public control than the private life of ordinary citizens, and the absence of corresponding reservations creates a risk of abuse, when an official or company can receive civil rights to demand the removal of their own profiles from analytics and control platforms.
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Recommendations of the Council of Europe
The conclusion, as presented by the company, contains several recommendations for revising the project before the final vote. European experts propose introducing a full list of legitimate grounds for processing information instead of a single rule of consent, clearly prescribing exceptions for combating corruption, journalism, public investigations, and maintaining registers, as well as providing anti-SLAPP mechanisms that protect journalists and activists from unfounded lawsuits and judicial pressure.
Consequences for the Civil Code Project No. 15150
Ukraine has formed a reputation in recent years as one of the most transparent countries in the field of open data, and this transparency is linked to anti-corruption policy and the requirements for membership in the European Union. Supporters of the project No. 15150 present it as an update of the rules of digital life. Critics, including YouControl, see risks to the openness of information in the current version. The question remains open until the parliament decides whether to take into account the remarks of the Council of Europe in the final text, under which the president will sign after adoption.
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