Ukrainian notary officers may get right to register marriage, birth, death by year-end

Ukrainian citizens will be able to register marriage, birth or death in the local authorities. These changes can occur by the end of this year.

The functions of state civil registry offices will be transferred to local authorities before the end of this year, Ukrainian Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko said recently, the Uriadovyi Kuryer Ukrainian governmental newspaper reports.

The reform, inter alia, proposes to optimize the procedure for registering civil status and to provide integrated administrative services. In particular, the functions of municipal civil registry offices will be transferred to local government.

“Then it will be possible to comprehensively provide these services through the centers of administrative services, which are located in every town. So, it will be possible to free the Justice Ministry, which oversees the municipal registry offices, from some functions and to save a lot of time for Ukrainians,” Viktor Tymoshchuk, the expert of the Center for Political and Legal Reforms, said.

The experts also say that such changes will also allow saving money on maintenance of public institutions themselves.

However, the transfer of functions of civil registry offices to notary offices may not enjoy success among the population, expert of the Reanimation Package of Reforms initiative, Olha Kalinichenko believes.

First of all, this may affect the cost of providing such services.

“The same thing was done with registration of business. However, the number of those wishing to receive such a service at a notary office has not increased too much as citizens like free provision of this service at the centers of administrative services. The same situation could happen with registration of marriage at a notary office as it will be more expensive for citizens,” Kalinichenko commented.

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