Victims' rights in the context of Ukraine's European integration: From the new EU Directive to paradoxes of implementation

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the updated EU Directive on the rights of victims of crime (2025) in the context of its significance for the reform of criminal justice in Ukraine as an EU candidate state. On the basis of comparative-legal and doctrinal approaches, the author examines the key novelties of the Directive, including the strengthening of victims' procedural rights, the introduction of the EU-wide support line 116 006, the expansion of guarantees for vulnerable groups, the protection of privacy, and the requirements concerning professional training. At the same time, the article analyses an example from the case-law of the Criminal Cassation Court within the Supreme Court of Ukraine, where the victim's position is considered 'not decisive' when applying the statute of limitations under Article 49 of the Criminal Code, which conflicts with the standard of meaningful victim participation enshrined in the Directive. The main theoretical part of the article develops the author's conceptual framework of 'paradoxes of victimhood'eight structural contradictions embedded in the logic of victim-centred criminal-law reforms: from the instrumentalisation of victims' narratives for punitive expansion, to the tension between protection and over-criminalisation, between the victim's voice and procedural fairness, and between emotional legitimacy and normative restraint. These paradoxes are examined through the prism of Ukraine's wartime and post-conflict experience and are analysed with due regard to the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights. The author concludes that approximation of the Directive requires not only legislative amendments but also a transformation of the institutional culture of justice, and proposes concrete reform priorities: procedural guarantees of victim participation, systematic professional training, sunset clauses for extraordinary wartime norms, and independent monitoring.