Free Education for Military Personnel and Their Families: Parliament Points to Lack of Implementation Mechanism for the Project

The draft law "On the Responsibility of the State to Military Personnel" No. 15238, which aims to strengthen social guarantees for military personnel and their family members, received a number of remarks. Most of its provisions are declarative in nature, lack practical implementation mechanisms, and some norms contradict the requirements of budget legislation.

As reported by the "Judicial and Legal Newspaper", the draft law proposes to legislatively establish the state's responsibility for untimely payment of monetary allowances, failure to provide access to housing and mortgage programs, as well as failure to ensure the possibility of free education for military personnel and their family members.

However, current legislation already provides mechanisms of responsibility for violations of the right of military personnel to timely receipt of monetary allowances. In particular, civil-law sanctions may be applied for delays in payment in the form of recovery of the average wage for the delay period in accordance with Article 117 of the Labor Code of Ukraine, compensation for inflation losses according to the Law "On Compensation to Citizens for Loss of Part of Income Due to Violation of Payment Deadlines", as well as administrative and criminal liability of officials.

Also, the Verkhovna Rada recalled the legal position of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, according to which in cases of recovery of payments due to military personnel, the limitation periods for filing claims to court are not restricted. In addition, in May 2026, the Verkhovna Rada already supported in the first reading draft law No. 15167, which provides for directing revenues from the military tax to a special fund of the state budget to finance monetary allowances for Armed Forces servicemen.

Despite this, the key drawback of draft law No. 15238 is the declarative nature of its provisions. The draft law contains general obligations of the state regarding timely and full payment of monetary allowances, automatic accrual of funds without submitting additional documents, and penalty accrual for delays, but does not define real mechanisms for implementing these norms. Because of this, it will be practically impossible to establish the fact of their fulfillment or non-fulfillment by state authorities or local self-government bodies.

Criticism also concerns provisions on automatic assignment of monetary allowances, bonuses, compensations, payments to family members of the deceased and missing persons, as well as free acquisition of professional, specialized pre-higher and higher education without submitting additional certificates. These proposals require clear definition of the procedure for their implementation and sources of funding.

Moreover, the draft law does not comply with the requirements of the Budget Code of Ukraine and the Regulations of the Verkhovna Rada, as it lacks proper financial and economic justification of the proposed changes.

Specifically, draft law No. 15238 is part of a large package of 15 draft laws submitted by a single legislative initiative subject. These projects concern military service, mobilization, reserve, rotation, demobilization, booking, monetary allowances, etc.

At the same time, there are logical and normative collisions between some draft laws, meaning they contradict each other or propose different approaches to the same issues. In particular, this concerns draft laws No. 15234 "On the phased model of military service and guaranteed demobilization" and No. 15244 "On the long-term motivational model of military service"; due to these contradictions, there is no unified concept for reforming social guarantees for military personnel.

Therefore, the Verkhovna Rada considers the draft law declarative because it establishes that the state must automatically pay military personnel all due funds without additional documents but does not define the mechanism of how this will work in practice.

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