The reform of state environmental control has been implemented for at least five years. It is almost three years since registration in the Parliament of the Draft Law on State Environmental Control No. 3091. In July 2021, it was adopted as a basis, and the issue has not moved any further.
International charitable organization “Environment-People-Law” is extremely concerned about the delay of this reform. In fact, it is of primary importance because any sectoral reform aimed to promote Ukraine’s European integration will not be effective until an effective mechanism of control and responsibility for violations of environmental legislation is in place. Implementation of institutional reforms in order to increase the capacity of the Ministry of Environment and the State Environmental Inspectorate to effectively perform their functions is an obligation under the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement.
The draft law No. 3091, for the first time at the level of a separate law, proposes to comprehensively regulate the spectrum of legal relations arising between the state and all controlled entities on issues of compliance with environmental legislation, to introduce modern mechanisms of control and responsibility, which will significantly increase the level of compliance with the relevant requirements, namely:
the draft law creates legislative grounds for the timely and effective performance of the functions assigned to it by the state environmental control body, by granting it the appropriate amount of powers and eliminating legal obstacles and conflicts existing in the current legislation;
the draft law regulates state environmental control measures that go beyond scheduled and unscheduled inspections of business entities. It is about laying legal foundations for conducting patrols, raids and prompt response to violations of environmental legislation;
the innovation of the draft law is expansion of the responsibility of economic entities. In contrast to the existing ineffective norms of the Code of Ukraine on administrative offenses, the draft law introduces offenses for business entities, sanctions (administrative-economic fines) for violating environmental requirements, as well as the procedure for imposing them. Amounts of the proposed fines are significant and thus capable of changing the attitude of controlled entities to environmental requirements;
among the proposed administrative and economic fines, there are also substantial fines for preventing environmental inspectors from conducting inspections;
to overcome corruption risks, the draft law provides for digitalization of state environmental control measures, functioning of an open database, and a decent level of salaries for inspectors.
Since July 15, 2021 and until now, the draft law is at the stage of finalization before the second reading although all of more than a thousand amendments proposed to it were processed last autumn.
In view of the armed aggression against Ukraine, effective work of the state environmental inspectorate becomes even more urgent. The scale of the damage caused by the aggressor to the environment of Ukraine requires daily work to record and calculate such damage. Today, it is important not only to establish a legal framework for operational, effective and transparent state environmental control in peacetime, but also to lay the foundation for proper collection of evidence about environmental damage caused by military actions, for further prosecution of guilty persons and recovery of compensation for damage caused in national courts and at the international level.
ICO “Environment-People-Law” calls on the Ministry of Environment, the Parliamentary Committee on Environmental Policy and other parliamentarians to resume work on reviewing the draft law No. 3091 in order to adopt it as a whole already this year.
