Council of Europe opinion on draft Civil Code No. 15150: an expert review of the risks for the open data ecosystem

On 14 June 2026, the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Ruslan Stefanchuk, described the Council of Europe opinion on draft Civil Code No. 15150 as “generally positive”. However, the full text of the opinion contains significant reservations about provisions that could create systemic risks for open data, anti-corruption oversight, investigative journalism and the operation of state registers.

The NGO “Open Data Association” presents an expert review of this opinion from the perspective of protecting access to public information.

On 28 April 2026, the Verkhovna Rada adopted draft Civil Code No. 15150 at first reading — a document of more than 800 pages that replaces the current Civil Code of 2003. Between the first and second readings, more than 15,000 amendments have already been submitted — an unprecedented figure that in itself shows how much concern the draft has caused among experts and legal professionals.

As early as April–May 2026, the expert community identified the risks the draft creates for the open data system. The key concern related to four provisions spread across different articles of the code, which together change the basic logic of access to public information — from a presumption of openness to a presumption of the individual’s consent.

The Council of Europe opinion, published in June 2026, not only confirmed these concerns but also significantly broadened them, adding the dimension of protecting freedom of expression and the need to preserve public oversight of officials.

What the Council of Europe identified

Experts from the CoE Freedom of Expression Cooperation Unit focused on four groups of risky provisions.

Article 336 — “the right to a digital personal space”

The provision introduces the principle that personal data and metadata may be processed only with the individual’s consent. Council of Europe experts point out that such an all-or-nothing approach:

• paralyses open data platforms that aggregate information from state registers;
• blocks OSINT analysis, on which modern anti-corruption journalism is based;
• makes systematic public oversight of corrupt practices impossible;
• contradicts Article 8 of the Law “On Personal Data Protection”, which provides for other lawful grounds for processing information, not only consent.

Article 328 — “the right to be forgotten”

The provision allows people to demand the removal of information not only because it is inaccurate, but also because of a “loss of public interest”. Council of Europe experts referred to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and stressed that any right of a person to “exit history” must be balanced against society’s right to access data about past events.

Without clearly defined exceptions, the provision becomes a legal tool for:

• erasing the traces of persons subject to international sanctions;
• removing information about defendants in corruption cases from public archives;
• blocking access to data about dishonest businesses and their corporate history.

Articles 345 and 353 — “digital privacy” of legal entities

The draft extends the concept of digital privacy to legal entities: companies gain a “right” to their own digital image, accounts and profiles, the processing of which requires the company’s own consent. The Council of Europe opinion explicitly calls this construction a legal absurdity.

The CoE’s reasoning is fundamental: a legal entity is by its nature an artificially created legal construct, not a human being. The concept of “privacy” in the human rights sense does not apply to legal entities. The concept of a company’s digital privacy directly contradicts:

• the logic of maintaining state registers (the Unified State Register, the Unified State Register of Court Decisions, registers of sanctioned persons);
• the system of counterparty compliance checks that underpins KYC/KYCC procedures in the banking sector;
• the tasks of financial monitoring and anti-money laundering control.

No systemic exceptions for journalism and oversight of officials

Council of Europe experts separately stress that the draft provides no systemic exceptions for journalism, anti-corruption investigations or enhanced public oversight of officials. The established model for balancing privacy and the public interest developed by the European Court of Human Rights has not been implemented.

The direct consequence of this gap is that every official will have a formal legal basis to block publications about their own wealth, business connections and conflicts of interest.

What the Council of Europe recommends

The opinion contains three framework recommendations that should be implemented before the second reading:

1. Replace the “processing by consent” rule with flexible legal grounds — information should be processed on a range of lawful grounds, including the public interest, journalism, the maintenance of registers and the legislative function.
2. Clearly enshrine exceptions for fighting corruption, investigative journalism, OSINT analysis and the operation of state registers — as direct provisions in the Civil Code itself, not only in secondary legislation.
3. Introduce anti-SLAPP mechanisms to protect journalists, activists and analytical organisations from legal harassment by officials and businesses that may use the new provisions as a pressure tool.

The European integration dimension

Ukraine is in an active phase of EU accession negotiations, with negotiating clusters open on a number of chapters of the acquis communautaire. Two of them — Chapter 23 “Judiciary and fundamental rights” and Chapter 24 “Justice, freedom and security” — set binding standards in the areas of:

• freedom of expression and access to information;
• protection of journalists and CSOs from judicial harassment;
• effectiveness of anti-corruption mechanisms;
• personal data protection balanced with the public interest.

Adopting Civil Code No. 15150 in its current form creates a direct conflict with these standards. The framework condition for progress under Chapters 23 and 24 — a system in which the balance between privacy and public oversight is settled in favour of public oversight in clearly defined categories — would be systematically violated.

In addition, the draft in its current form potentially contradicts:

• the Ukraine Facility Regulation 2024/792, where access to public information is part of the control conditions;
• the EU Anti-Corruption Directive adopted in December 2025;
• Ukraine’s obligations under Council of Europe Convention 108+ on the protection of personal data, where processing on the basis of the public interest and the legislative function are expressly provided grounds.

ASVIDA’s position

The NGO “Open Data Association” regards the Council of Europe opinion as a fundamental confirmation of the expert position that Ukraine’s open data advocacy community has consistently articulated since draft law No. 15150 was registered.

ASVIDA fully supports all three framework recommendations of the Council of Europe and calls on the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine to:

• completely revise Article 336, replacing all-or-nothing “consent” with flexible legal grounds for processing information;
• supplement Article 328 with clear exceptions for journalism, anti-corruption investigations, the maintenance of state registers and enhanced public oversight of public figures;
• remove the concept of “digital privacy” of legal entities from Articles 345 and 353, or narrow it substantially so that it does not contradict the logic of compliance checks and transparency of business transactions;
• implement anti-SLAPP mechanisms as a separate block of provisions in the Civil Code or in an accompanying draft law.

Conclusion

[note] The Council of Europe opinion leaves no room for ambiguity: draft Civil Code No. 15150 in its current form does not meet European standards on freedom of expression, access to public information and anti-corruption oversight.

ASVIDA calls on the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Legal Policy and the Chairman of Parliament to ensure that the Council of Europe recommendations are fully taken into account in the second-reading text. Voting for the current version without fundamental changes would be a step that:

• breaches Ukraine’s obligations under Chapters 23 and 24 of the EU acquis;
• slows down accession negotiations;
• undoes Ukraine’s achievements in open data in recent years;
• legalises tools that could be used to hide information about corruption offences, sanctioned businesses and the activities of public figures.

Ukraine’s open data advocacy community will continue to defend democratic standards of access to public information, record how MPs vote and publicly inform partners about progress or backsliding in this area.