While businesses complain about widespread refusals to issue environmental impact assessment (EIA) reports, the Ministry of Economy, Environment, and Agriculture of Ukraine, instead of making real changes to the procedure, is inviting stakeholders to yet another online discussion.
The event announcement was published on the ministry’s official website.
This month alone, we have counted 11 refusals to issue EIA reports on the Ministry’s website.
The situation is utterly absurd: the Ministry of Economy emphasizes at every opportunity how open they are to feedback from the business community and how eager they are to help, but when it comes to unblocking companies’ operations, officials limit themselves to yet another round of “empty talk.”
Business representatives emphasize that the EIA procedure in its current format hinders investment, construction, modernization, and tax revenues. They are asking for it to be revised to reduce the pressure on manufacturers, who are already under strain amid a full-scale war.
Experts and stakeholders at previous meetings organized by the ministry have already listed the problems with the EIA procedure and provided their suggestions. However, officials have yet to address these points, and participants have not received any feedback from the discussions.
What is the point of these discussions if stakeholders’ opinions remain ignored? Such meetings become a waste of time for both business and public representatives as well as ministry staff. It gives the impression that the sole purpose of these gatherings is to imitate openness and the appearance of active work by officials.
Earlier, EcoPolitic reported on the results of the analysis of the report by the Accounting Chamber of Ukraine “Environmental Impact Assessment and Strategic Environmental Assessment – On the Path to the ‘Green Transition,’” conducted by the Association of Environmental Professionals (PAEW).
Experts have noted that, despite the presence of instruments for transparent EIA and strategic environmental assessment (SEA) procedures, in practice these processes have low effectiveness. In their view, Ukraine has established an adequate legal and institutional framework for conducting EIA and SEA, but has failed to ensure proper implementation of these standards.
