In its recommendations to Ukraine, the European Commission has listed the reform of the State Environmental Inspectorate of Ukraine among the 5 priorities in the field of environmental protection for 2024.
This was reported by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine.
The reform of state environmental control is one of the requirements of the European Commission for the further European integration of our country.
The main problem is that environmental control authorities in Ukraine and the EU have radically different functions and powers. In the EU, environmental authorities are supposed to ensure that environmental legislation is complied with and that violators are held accountable. The functions of the national SEI are still limited mainly to conducting inspections and imposing fines, and in the worst cases, to "nightmarizing" businesses and creating artificial obstacles to their business activities.
It is impossible in principle to combine two systems with such different approaches. Therefore, if Ukraine has chosen the path of European integration and wants to see success in this process, postponing the SEI reform is absolutely unacceptable.
But instead of taking concrete steps to create a conceptually new body based on the European model, the Ministry of the Environment spread empty chatter and repeatedly made amendments to draft law No. 3091 "On State Environmental Control", the only real change in which was a change in the name of the control body without any transformations in approaches and principles of its work.
After the idea of simply changing the sign, eco-officials and lawmakers came up with another idea – to close the DEI altogether. As they say: "There is no body – there is no need to reform it." Fortunately, after a few months, they decided to abandon this "brilliant" idea.
And now the European Commission was once again forced to focus the attention of Ukrainian environmental officials on the importance of this issue. Because instead of rolling up its sleeves and finally taking on the development of a fundamentally new structure, the Ministry of Environment generally demonstrates only decorative changes, such as, for example, in the form of "EcoZagroza".
The reluctance of the ministry to really reform the system is so great that it can already be seen from European capitals. But it will have to change, despite the ardent reluctance to lose such a well-established mechanism of pressure and earnings, which still exists thanks to the unreformed SEI.
The Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, Ruslan Strilets, stated that reform of the State Environmental Inspection is one of the priorities for 2024.
Previously, EcoPolitic already analyzed how the reform of the State Environmental Inspection unfolded and why it actually failed.
In March, we reported that in the SEI started discussing the project of the Ecocontrol Reform Strategy.
