Representatives of non-governmental organizations called on the head of state to note the fact that MPs were ignoring their duties, which threatens to undermine the obligations under the Plan of Ukraine. They also demanded that parliamentary factions analyze the situation and publicly explain the voting results.
They published an open appeal to the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy regarding the European integration draft law No. 6004-d "On Ensuring the Constitutional Rights of Citizens to a Safe Environment for Life and Health" on the website of the Ukrainian National Platform.
Civil society organizations – members of the Working Group 3 "Environment, Climate Change and Energy Security" of the Ukrainian National Platform of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum (UNP EaP CSF) and Working Group 5 "Energy, Transport, Environment and Climate Change" of the Ukrainian Side of the EU-Ukraine Civil Society Platform (US CSP) – declared a complete misunderstanding of the position of the Ukrainian MPs, whose voting led to the rejection in the second reading of one of the key European integration draft laws No. 6004-d, which was supposed to implement Directive 2010/75/EU regulating industrial pollution.
Activists noted that the bill was not sufficiently supported by any parliamentary faction. They reported that 75 deputies did not come to the meeting, and 74 left the session hall during the voting.
"Not a single deputy dared to vote against this key draft law, but as a result, three years of work by the Parliament and more than five years of efforts of the expert environment, in particular the non-governmental sector, were nullified", – members of the working groups were outraged.
They emphasized that the adoption of draft law No. 6004-d was extremely important, in particular for the following reasons:
- It is an integral part of Ukraine's European integration obligations.
- Its adoption was an obligation of Ukraine within the framework of the recently agreed Plan of Ukraine for the purposes of the Ukraine Facility and a mandatory prerequisite for receiving budgetary assistance from the European Union.
- Reforming the sphere of industrial pollution will be one of the important requirements of the negotiation process within the framework of Chapter 27 "Environment and Climate".
Despite the fact that the next day the text of the draft law returned to the Verkhovna Rada with a different number and the deputies voted for it in the first reading, the activists also appealed to the European and international partners of Ukraine with a request to pay the necessary attention to this vote and to promote a public dialogue about the consequences of this vote in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
As EcoPolitic reported earlier, on June 20 Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted as a basis the project of the Law "On Integrated Prevention and Control of Industrial Pollution" No. 11355. It turned out to be practically identical to the European integration draft law No. 6004-d "On ensuring the constitutional rights of citizens to an environment safe for life and health", for the adoption of which the people's elected officials lacked only one (!) vote on June 19.
