Ukraine's parliament has voted to block civil and commercial courts from accessing confidential foreign banking information held by the National Bank of Ukraine.
Lawmakers in the Verkhovna Rada passed draft law number 15555 in its second reading and as a whole on Wednesday, 11 November. The measure, which aims to improve the procedure for disclosing banking secrecy by the central bank, received support from 268 members of parliament.
The adopted legislation prohibits Ukrainian civil and commercial courts from demanding information that the National Bank received from banking supervisory authorities of European Union member states. Under the new statutory rules, courts are legally required to leave any such petitions or applications unsatisfied.
The restriction does not apply to criminal courts, which retain the ability to request relevant evidence during criminal proceedings. In non-criminal matters, the National Bank may disclose banking secrets obtained from a foreign regulator only with the explicit consent of that partner authority, and solely for the specific purposes stated in that consent.
European Union accession requirements
The parliamentary decision is intended to bring Ukrainian national legislation into compliance with European Union Directive 2013/36/EU, the regulatory framework governing the prudential supervision of credit institutions and investment firms across the bloc.
Passing the legislation is a required condition for closing negotiating Chapter 9, titled Financial Services, as part of Ukraine's formal accession process to join the European Union. Candidate countries must align their domestic financial frameworks with European single-market rules across more than thirty negotiating chapters before accession talks can conclude.
The adoption of the measure is also mandated under Ukraine's cooperation memorandum with the International Monetary Fund. The Washington-based lender ties funding reviews under its lending facilities to structural reform benchmarks, including commitments by Kyiv to modernize its financial sector governance and strengthen statutory regulatory oversight.
History of supervisory data disputes
Efforts to reform Ukrainian bank secrecy rules follow a decade of friction with European supervisory bodies. An explanatory note attached to the draft law stated that the European Banking Authority, the EU agency responsible for banking regulation, issued a negative assessment in 2016 regarding the protection of confidential information in Ukraine.
Because of that negative assessment, the explanatory note said European regulators refused to share financial data with the National Bank of Ukraine. The document stated that the standoff directly hindered information exchanges necessary to counter money laundering and track illicit cross border financial flows.
The National Bank of Ukraine, which serves as the country's central monetary authority and chief banking regulator, had previously faced legal conflicts when domestic commercial courts handling business disputes and civil courts handling private claims sought access to overseas regulatory records. Commercial courts in Ukraine specialize in arbitrating contractual and corporate disagreements between companies.
Debate over bank secrecy and SEPA
The vote comes after months of debate among Ukrainian economic officials regarding the balance between privacy and regulatory transparency. At the beginning of 2025, the National Bank stated that banking secrecy was just as important as the presumption of innocence in a democratic society.
The Ministry of Finance later stated that it was holding ongoing discussions with the National Bank regarding banking secrecy within the framework of a draft law on the Single Euro Payments Area. SEPA is the European integration initiative designed to allow cashless euro payments across borders under unified technical and legal conditions.
