Historical role of the Commercial Code of Ukraine in ensuring the balance of interests of business entities

Abstract

The article is devoted to the rather topical issues of the role of the Commercial Code of Ukraine in the economic and business sector of relations, examines the balance of interests of business entities, studies the best practices of foreign countries, and analyzes the historical background of the times of Ancient Rome which had an impact on such relations. Today, in our country, economic relations are regulated by two leading codified acts: The Commercial Code of Ukraine and the Civil Code of Ukraine. Ukraine introduced this experience in 2003, using the experience of leading European countries that have successfully and dynamically combined this practice.
During the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, there is a tendency to change some of the legislative framework for doing business. The first step was to reduce the tax burden as a step towards social adaptation during the external aggression affecting all spheres of life, and then to return to the issue of increasing tax rates to accumulate the budget and implement state functions. A large number of businesses were forced to cease operations due to massive shelling of the border areas of Ukraine and the forced occupation of parts of the south and east of our country. Some commercial courts were forced to move to other cities to ensure the safety of the judicial system. Some theoretical and civil law authors support the idea that it is possible to introduce an innovation to liquidate economic courts, and in this regard, to provide for the merger of courts of first and second instance with the addition of consideration of cases of the economic cycle. In our opinion, such an innovation is extremely unacceptable, since the “mixing” of commercial and civil relations in local courts will lead to a degradation of the standards of legal proceedings demonstrated by commercial courts, including compliance with procedural deadlines. Clearly, it is necessary to study such issues more thoroughly, as the experience of leading European countries is extremely relevant, balanced and consistent.
We emphasize the position that there are several approaches to resolving this issue. Some researchers and experts believe that there was a certain contradiction between the provisions of the Civil Code and the Commercial Code, and proposed abolishing the latter and introducing a corresponding provision that would regulate commercial matters. Others believe in the advisability of modernizing outdated provisions of the commercial codified act through the mechanism of modernizing the code, removing certain contradictions in the provisions by harmonizing them with other legislative acts. It would be advisable to take measured steps to optimize the legislation, since, as a result of multifaceted turbulence, it is not so much external factors as internal ones that influence the expediency of revising the legal field, namely in the context of economic regulation.