THE IMPEACHMENT INSTITUTE: SAFEGUARDS AND PROPOSED IMPROVEMENTS

Introduction. When studying the issue of the institution of impeachment of the President of Ukraine, one should always keep in mind the place occupied by the head of state in the structure of state authorities. Despite the parliamentarypresidential form of government in the country, the President has a large amount of power that is more typical of presidential republics. His activities directly or indirectly affect certain areas of state and public life. And the issue of bringing the head of state to justice is of utmost importance. Since the adoption of the Constitution of Ukraine, the institution of presidential impeachment has not undergone any changes. However, this trend does not mean that there is no problem with the use of impeachment. The need to improve the mechanism of impeachment should be the subject not only of scientific research, but also one of the subjects of the ongoing constitutional reform. Purpose. The purpose of the study is to analyze some of the scholars' proposals for improving the impeachment institution in Ukraine, and on the basis of this analysis, the authors express reservations regarding certain ways of improvement and put forward their own proposals. Materials and methods. The materials of the study are: 1) regulatory and legal framework for the regulation of procedural issues of the institution of impeachment of the President of Ukraine; 2) works of domestic and foreign authors who conduct their scientific and practical research in the field of impeachment of the head of state. Various research methods were used in the course of work on the article. The main method used is the general scientific dialectical research method, which allowed to analyze the theoretical and practical issues of the constitutional and legal framework of the institution of impeachment of the President of Ukraine. The method of comparative legal research was also widely used in analyzing the experience of implementing a similar procedure for removing the President from power in foreign countries. In the course of the study, the authors used the specific historical method to investigate the establishment of the institution of impeachment of the President of Ukraine. In the course of the study, the methods of systemic and structural-functional analysis were widely used. Results. The article deals with the issue of improving the institution of impeachment of the President of Ukraine, which should become one of the subjects of the ongoing constitutional reform in Ukraine. The main material of the study is divided into two parts. The first part is devoted to reservations regarding certain ways to improve the institution of impeachment of the President of Ukraine, and the second part is devoted to the authors' own proposals for a comprehensive update of the impeachment mechanism in the state. Therefore, the first half of the study examines the proposals of Ukrainian scholars on impeachment, namely, the number of votes of the people's deputies of Ukraine required to make a decision on the removal of the President from office by impeachment. Further, through consideration of different points of view and practices of foreign countries regarding the commission of a criminal offense by the President as a ground for impeachment, attention is paid to the issue of grounds for initiating the impeachment procedure.