Political neutrality as an indicator of professional prosecution

The relevance of the topic is determined by the importance of the principle of political neutrality as a preventive factor of the prosecutor's professional activity, which is designed to protect him/her from external influence of any political force and emergence of personal illegal interests in the context of social cataclysms). The purpose of the article is to examine the professional activity of a prosecutor through understanding of its principles as indicative characteristics of professional skill and professionalism. To confirm this, the author chose functionalism as the main methodological approach, which gave him grounds to assert that the functions of activity determine professional skill (the prosecutor's profession), and the principles determine professionalism (the level of mastering this profession). The following methods were used as auxiliary methods: formal-logical (for a reasoned presentation of the research material), formal-dogmatic (for the analysis of current regulatory documents) and comparative legal (for comparing the analyzed material). The main results of the study show that the principle of political neutrality is a requirement in the field of professional activity of civil servants not only in Ukraine, but also in the European Union, integration with which is defined as the main vector of further development of our country. A distinction should be made between political neutrality and the synonymous concepts of political impartiality and independence, apoliticality and non-partisanship. At the same time, it is shown that political neutrality is one of the most important criteria in formulating requirements for professional selection, training, advanced training and professional activities of prosecutors. The practical value of the study is to warn prosecutors against political ignorance which may arise due to a misunderstanding of political neutrality. In order to avoid or overcome this negative aspect, the author proposes a number of factors for the prosecutor's professional excellence, which is described using a peculiar formula: the prosecutor's professional excellence can be viewed as the sum of political, media and information and environmental literacy divided by political neutrality.