The Committee of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on Environmental Policy and Nature Management will consider the new draft law No. 8410 "On Environmental Impact Assessment" at its meeting on Wednesday, March 15.
During the 5 years of implementation of the EIA procedure, a number of norms that need improvement have been identified. Therefore, the document is designed to digitize and improve the procedure, namely to simplify it for business and the public, in particular, regarding the submission of comments and suggestions during public discussions.
The proposed innovations will make it possible to shorten the period of the EIA procedure by 60 calendar days, as well as to pay for services online.
Bill No. 8410 provides for:
- shortening the period of public discussion of the notice of planned activity from 20 to 12 working days;
- notification of planned activity and announcement of the start of public discussion of the Environmental Impact Assessment Report will be filled out in digital format directly in the Unified Register of Environmental Impact Assessment. The authorized body will no longer be able to reject these documents due to their non-compliance with the approved form;
- the requirement to publish notices and announcements in mass media is cancelled. Instead, the draft law proposes to involve territorial communities in order to properly inform the public;
- the public will be able to register on the website of the Register for targeted information about the publication of information and documentation in it;
- determination of an exhaustive list of grounds for refusal to issue a conclusion from the EIA and shortening of the procedure in case of elimination of deficiencies that caused the refusal;
- it is proposed to record the grounds on which the planned activity may be deemed inadmissible.
According to experts, the document also contains a number of negative provisions regarding:
- legal certainty "non-compliance of the submitted documents with the requirements of the legislation" regarding the disclosure of the norms of legislation with a clear specification of their content;
- the actual equating of the provision of an opinion from the EIA, in which the inadmissibility of the planned activity is determined, with the procedure of refusing to issue a conclusion from the EIA, since the planned activity is not implemented as a result of the specified decisions;
- the possibility of informing business entities about the presence of such comments and proposals of authorized bodies, based on the results of consultations, as well as the procedure for receiving and taking them into account when implementing the EIA regarding the planned activity;
- not fully complying the regulatory impact analysis (RIA) with the draft Law with the requirements of the Methodology for conducting the impact analysis of the regulatory act, approved by the Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 308 of 03.11.2004;
- it has not been analyzed what benefits the state, the public, and business will receive if the activity is recognized as inadmissible or the issuance of an opinion from the EIA is refused;
- costs associated with the need to repeat the procedure as a result of providing an opinion from the EIA are not included.
As EcoPolitic previously reported, environmental non-governmental organizations analyzed the new draft law No. 8410 "On environmental impact assessment" and called it the first systematic review of the law on environmental protection since its adoption in 2017.
