Draft Bill No. 16117 on combating SLAPP suits has been registered with Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada, MP Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, chair of the parliamentary Freedom of Speech Committee, reported in a Facebook post.

The draft bill was co-authored by 25 MPs with input from experts at the Institute of Mass Information, the Human Rights Platform, the Centre for Democracy and Rule of Law, the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture, the Ukrainian Commissioner’s Office, and Bihus.Info’s Digital Security Lab.

The draft bill incorporates the main provisions and principles of Directive (EU) 2024/1069 granting independent investigators additional protections against pressure exerted through litigation.

The draft bill proposes allowing courts to dismiss unfounded claims at an early stage (sometimes even before the defendant is involved), granting the case res judicata status, preventing the plaintiff from filing the same claim again.

It also proposes:

placing the burden of proof on the claimant;
requiring the claimant to pay a monetary deposit to cover the defendant’s legal costs;
granting media professionals the right to free secondary legal aid.
Under the bill, the court could also require the claimant to pay a monetary deposit at the outset. According to Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, if the claim is found to constitute abuse of process, the money would go towards paying the defendant’s lawyers.

Institute of Mass Information lawyer Volodymyr Zelenchuk stressed that the draft bill and the EU Directive do not restrict the subjects of reporting in their right to seek redress in court, but will make abusing that right more difficult.

“Of course, the enforcement of all the ideas and principles behind the draft bill will largely depend on how case law develops in practice, and how quickly judges come to understand that, say, a local investigative outlet and a construction company with multimillion-dollar revenues are never on equal footing as parties to a case. The Institute of Mass Information took part in drafting this bill in the hope that its adoption will turn SLAPP suits into a relic of a time when freedom of expression wasn’t as fundamental a value as it is today,” Volodymyr Zelenchuk said.

Yaroslav Yurchyshyn remarked that the draft bill had already been reviewed and approved by press freedom experts with the Council of Europe and the OSCE.

“We must protect journalists from Portnov’s legacy [referring to Andriy Portnov, the late ex-deputy head of the Presidential Administration, infamous for his bad faith lawsuits against media outlets and journalists] and meet this European Union requirement by the end of 2026,” the MP added.

The Verkhovna Rada Committee on Freedom of Speech set up a dedicated task force to develop effective anti-SLAPP mechanisms on 25 June 2025, bringing together more than 25 participants, including MPs, lawyers, media experts, and representatives of state institutions.

The Institute of Mass Information also joined the group and was involved in drafting the anti-SLAPP bill package.