The Committee on Environmental Policy and Nature Management recommended that the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopt the government bill No. 8410 "On Environmental Impact Assessment" as a basis.
The document is aimed at digitalization of the EIA procedure, a government representative in the Verkhovna Rada Taras Melnichuk reports on Telegram.
Draft law No. 8410 was designed to solve the problems of the EIA procedure, which were revealed during the five years of its implementation. However, it does not take into account the comments and suggestions of the public, and also does not work out a number of negative norms.
Thus, according to the president of the Association of Environmental Professionals PAEU, the founder of the Office of Sustainable Solutions, Lyudmila Tsyganok, the draft law contains negative provisions regarding:
- legal certainty "inconsistency of the submitted documents with the requirements of the legislation" on the disclosure of the norms of "legislation" with a clear specification of their content;
- the actual identification of the provision of an opinion from the Internal Affairs Directorate, which determines the inadmissibility of carrying out planned activities, with the procedure for refusing to issue an opinion from the Internal Affairs Directorate, since, based on the results of these decisions, the planned activity is not implemented;
- the possibility of informing economic entities about the presence of such comments and proposals from authorized bodies based on the results of consultations, as well as the procedure for their receipt and accounting in the implementation of EIA for the planned activity;
- not fully complying with the regulatory impact analysis (RIA) to the draft Law with the requirements of the Methodology for conducting the impact analysis of a regulatory act, approved by the Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of 11.03.2004 No. 308;
- it has not been analyzed what benefits the state, the public and business will receive if the activity is recognized as unacceptable or the issuance of an opinion from the Department of Internal Affairs is refused;
- does not include the costs associated with the need to repeat the procedure as a result of the provision of an opinion from the Department of Internal Affairs.
“Despite the public declaration of "openness and cooperation", the official position of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources on EIA raises many questions, both on leveling the requirements of the Law of Ukraine "On the Fundamentals of State Regulatory Policy in the Sphere of Economic Activity" regarding the guaranteed full consideration of each proposal, and and regarding the very justifications for rejecting proposals,” stressed Tsyganok on Facebook.
Melnychuk noted that, among other things, bill No. 8410 provides for the following changes:
- reduction of the period of public discussion of the notification of the proposed activity from 20 to 12 business days;
- messages about planned activities and announcements about the start of public discussion of the Environmental Impact Assessment Report will be filled in digital format directly in the Unified Register for Environmental Impact Assessment. The authorized body will not be able to reject these documents due to their inconsistency with the approved form;
- the requirement to publish a message and an announcement in the media is cancelled. The bill proposes to involve territorial communities in order to ensure proper public information;
- the public will be able to register on the website of the Register for targeted information about the disclosure of information and documentation in it;
- an exhaustive list of grounds for refusing to issue an environmental impact assessment opinion was determined and the EIA procedure was shortened in case of elimination of the shortcomings that caused the refusal;
- it is proposed to fix the grounds on which the planned activity may be recognized as unacceptable.
Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, that the Association of Environmental Professionals PAEU called on the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Environmental Policy and Nature Management to take into account the comments of business and prevent disproportionate regulation of the licensing procedure for ATS (environmental impact assessment).
