After the failed vote on April 29 for the European integration bill No. 4197-d “On the Timber Market,” a group of MPs registered a new bill No. 13277 with the same title on the same day, then withdrew it and resubmitted it.
Information on the movement of this document is available in its card on the website of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
The chronology is as follows:
On April 29, a group of 17 MPs registers draft law No. 13277 in the parliament;
The very next day, on April 30, it is withdrawn, revised, and resubmitted;
On May 1, the bill is sent to the committee for consideration.
Screenshot from itd.rada.gov.ua.
When the MPs failed to vote for the draft law No. 4197-d “On the Timber Market”, which is related to European integration, EcoPolitics assumed that MPs could submit a similar document, only under a different number and with a different name. We have already seen such a trick during the adoption of the Law of Ukraine No. 3855-IX “On Integrated Prevention and Control of Industrial Pollution”.
Then, the long-suffering draft law No. 6004-d “On Ensuring the Constitutional Rights of Citizens to a Safe Environment for Life and Health”, which lacked one (!!!) vote to pass, was replaced in one day with a similar draft law No. 11355 “On Integrated Prevention and Control of Industrial Pollution”. This time, however, they did not even change the name of the draft law on the timber market.
As a reminder, according to Article 107 of the Law of Ukraine “On the Rules of Procedure of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine,” “a draft law rejected by the Verkhovna Rada or a draft law that repeats it in essence cannot be submitted at the current and subsequent extraordinary sessions of the Verkhovna Rada of the relevant convocation.” But it seems that MPs do not care much about this. We will follow the further progress of this document.
Timeline of the draft law on the timber market
As a reminder, the first vote in the Verkhovna Rada and the adoption of the draft law No. 4197-d “On the Timber Market” as a basis took place on November 18, 2021. After that, there was a long break in its preparation. Active work on its preparation for the second reading began only in the second half of 2024.
As of mid-January, only the version of the document for the first reading was available on the Verkhovna Rada's website, which had been amended a lot during preparation.
On February 4, the Committee on Economic Development at its meeting recommended that the Verkhovna Rada adopt in the second reading and as a whole the draft Law No. 4197-d “On the Timber Market”.
The relevant committee later provided its recommendation to the Verkhovna Rada to adopt the draft law No. 4197-d in the second reading and as a whole at a meeting on April 24. In preparing the document for the second reading, MPs received 904 proposals and submitted 9 more. As a result, 9 of them were taken into account, 119 proposals were taken into account editorially, and 785 proposals were rejected.
On April 29, this draft law on the timber market did not have enough votes to be adopted in the second reading and in general. It received only 175 votes out of the required 226.
Earlier, EcoPolitic published an article about the progress of the draft law No. 4197-d “On the Timber Market” and its main provisions.
