The European Commission has published its annual report on Ukraine for 2026. Among other things, the document analyses the fulfilment of the EU accession criteria under Chapter 27 "Environment and Climate Change". The EU noted Ukraine's legislative steps. At the same time, a number of issues are a cause for concern. The European Commission is worried about high corruption risks, in particular in forestry and land use, as well as about harmful exemptions from the environmental impact assessment (EIA) procedure that Ukraine grants to entire categories of the economy under the guise of deregulation.
EcoPolitic has analysed the European Commission's remarks and outlines the key ones.
Negative impact of the merger of ministries
The European Commission notes Ukraine's weakened institutional capacity to implement environmental standards. This is primarily due to an ineffective division of powers. The merger of the Ministry of Environmental Protection with the Ministry of Economy had a direct impact on this factor.
Given the huge volume of European integration work in the environmental sphere, limited funding and the low priority given to environmental issues, this leads to delays in legislative work. It also has a negative effect on the practical implementation of the updated rules.
At the same time, the European Commission insists on the need to strengthen corruption prevention and ensure accountability. In the EU's view, steps towards this include enhanced monitoring and data collection, as well as improved governance structures and enforcement of environmental legislation.
Shortcomings of environmental control
Ukrainian practices in conducting environmental impact assessment (EIA) and strategic environmental assessment (SEA) procedures also drew many remarks. The European Commission insists that there should be no exemptions.
The EU gave a negative assessment to the exclusion of entire categories from EIA and SEA, which in Ukraine is presented as a simplification of administrative procedures. It also stressed that the requirements of the EU acquis on public consultations, assessment of a project's cumulative impact and the prevention of project splitting must be strictly observed.
Ukraine also needs to adopt a framework law on environmental control that is consistent with the strategy for its reform.
High corruption risks
The EU noted that in practice the rules are enforced very weakly, which leads to high corruption risks. The most vulnerable areas are land use, mineral extraction, forestry, the issuing of waste management permits and the holding of tenders.
The report gives an example regarding timber. On the one hand, digital tools have been introduced to increase the transparency of logging and exports. More than 4,900 illegal loggings have been recorded. In practice, however, only a small portion of the illegal proceeds has been recovered in court.
Air, water and waste
In all these areas, Ukrainian legislation is only partially aligned with EU rules.
In the field of air quality, the European Commission insists that many more measures need to be taken. Among them:
- setting national emission ceilings;
- introducing monitoring of volatile organic compound emissions;
- improving control of sulphur content;
- improving air quality data collection.
For effective waste management, an appropriate regulatory framework and infrastructure need to be created at the national and regional levels. As for water quality, progress is being held back by weak administrative capacity, limited funding and incomplete alignment with the EU acquis, in particular regarding nitrates, drinking water and wastewater.
Construction threat to nature
A number of nature conservation areas in Ukraine still lack the appropriate status. However, there are construction projects that are already affecting the preservation of these not-yet-protected ecosystems. This raises open concern in the European Commission and gives it grounds to note that, in the field of nature protection, Ukrainian legislation is aligned with European legislation only to a very limited extent.
Combating climate change
Here the European Commission notes some progress, but points out that the target of reducing emissions by more than 65% compared to 1990 levels leaves room for a significant increase in emissions compared to 2024 levels.
The report briefly mentions the documents that have been adopted and those awaiting approval by parliament. In particular, these are the draft laws on the creation of a National Emissions Trading System. The European Commission does not assess their provisions in the report.
Among the remarks is the need for alignment with the requirements for road transport and buildings (the ETS2 sectors), as well as for ensuring data collection at a proper level. The EU also stressed that the procedure for monitoring and evaluating the implementation of state climate policy has still not been adopted.
EcoPolitic previously analysed in detail the draft laws on the NETS registered in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Their comparison is available in this article.
Overall, under Chapter 27, Ukraine has to implement more than 200 European legal acts and incorporate them into its domestic legislation.
A number of important draft laws have "carried over" to the new session of parliament. Which ones exactly is covered in EcoPolitic's detailed analysis.
