The Committee on Environmental Policy and Nature Management recommended that the Verkhovna Rada adopt in its second reading and as a whole the government bill No. 8410 "On Amendments to the Law of Ukraine "On Environmental Impact Assessment", which has been widely criticized by the public.
The document is aimed at improving and digitizing the EIA procedure, the representative of the government in the Verkhovna Rada, Taras Melnychuk, reported in Telegram.
He noted that the draft law provides for:
- shortening the terms of the EIA procedure;
- by reducing the body's discretionary powers when making decisions during the EIA procedure.
The public criticized the draft law due to the complication of the EIA procedure. In addition, the document does not take into account comments and suggestions of the public, as well as a number of negative norms are not worked out.
President of the Association of Environmental Professionals PAEU, founder of the Office of Sustainable Solutions Lyudmila Tsyganok criticized the draft law and the position of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources. Not taken into account in the document remark of:
- 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 them and taking them into account when carrying out an environmental impact assessment regarding the planned activity;
- not fully complying with the regulatory impact analysis (RIA) of the draft Law with the requirements of the Methodology for conducting the impact analysis of the regulatory act, approved by Resolution No. 308 of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine dated March 11, 2004.
It should be noted that changes in the EIA procedure always cause large-scale discussions among all interested parties. However, the new draft law, despite a number of promising changes, also contains negative norms.
Earlier, EcoPolitic analyzed the government draft law No. 8410 "About environmental impact assessment" and spoke with experts to assess the changes.
