The purpose of the article is to clarify the essence of the prohibition to abolish and restrict human and citizen’s rights and freedoms as part of the formula of immutability of the Ukrainian Constitution. To this end, the authors set the following tasks: 1) to compare the formulas of immutability in foreign constitutions with similar requirements of the Constitution of Ukraine; 2) to characterize the prohibition on the abolition and restriction of rights in the Constitution of Ukraine; 3) to formulate the most important positions of the body of constitutional jurisdiction of Ukraine, developed by it in the practice of preliminary (preliminary) normative control when making amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine regarding the restriction of human and civilrights and freedoms, as well as to provide proposals for improving such practice of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine.

It turns out that in the future it is worth considering the issue of moving away from the concept of “restrictions” as an element of the formula of immutability, and instead taking into account the emphasis on the abolition of rights and their guarantees. So far, all the efforts of the constitutional control body are aimed one way or another at building an argument from the position of prohibiting restrictions on the rights and freedoms of a person and a citizen. Instead, the search for the core, the essential content of the law, which should be protected by the formula on the prohibition of the abolition of human rights and their guarantees, is relegated to the background. In this regard, at least, it is quite possible to focus on the experience of Romania and Moldova regarding the prohibition of the abolition of guarantees of rights. But the issue of the balance of powers of government bodies and other criteria should be an explicit part of the formula of immutability. It would also be possible to use the Swiss approach and fix the requirement of unity of constitutional matter when making amendments or more radically expand the formula of immutability by establishing other additional criteria. While preserving the textual expression of the corresponding formula of immutability, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine could directly form a doctrine of implicit criteria that must be followed when making amendments, since the current practice of deriving them precisely from the prohibition of restricting rights and freedoms, in our opinion, blurs the understanding of restrictions on human rights as such. In general, the practice of prior control over draft laws on amending the Constitution of Ukraine can and should be improved by forming a holistic doctrine of immutable provisions and the role of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine in their interpretation. The position of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine regarding the formulation of so-called “reservations” in its conclusions, which today, as practice shows, are not mandatory, should also be reviewed.

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