The Professional Association of Environmentalists of Ukraine (PAEU) has accused the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of complicating the environmental impact assessment (EIA) procedure, while the European community is simplifying it.
The new draft law "On amendments to the Law "On Environmental Impact Assessment" does not take into account the observations of decision No. 515 of the State Regulatory Service and a number of other proposals, reports the Office of Sustainable Solutions.
The authors emphasized that the document does not take into account the comments set out in the decision of the State Administrative Court No. 515 of 12.28.2022 regarding:
- legal uncertainty "inconsistency of the submitted documents with the requirements of the legislation" regarding the disclosure of the norms of the "legislation" with a clear specification of their content;
- factual identification of the provision of an environmental impact assessment opinion, in which the inadmissibility of the planned activity is determined, with the procedure of refusal to issue an environmental impact assessment opinion, since the planned activity is not implemented as a result of the specified decisions;
- the possibility of informing business entities about the presence of 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.
In particular, in the RIA, in case of adoption of the law, a reduction in the duration of the procedure is noted as a benefit.
The authors emphasized that it was also not analyzed what benefits the state, the public, and business would receive if the activity was recognized as inadmissible or if the conclusion of the EIA was refused.
They explained that in the case of the adoption of the draft law, the calculation of the costs of business entities contains data on the amount of the fee for holding a public discussion in the EIA process. However, the costs associated with the need to repeat the procedure are not included, if the conclusion of the EIA determines the inadmissibility of the planned activity, or the refusal to issue the conclusion. In particular, this concerns the costs of conducting research, preparing a report and administering the permit procedure.
The article emphasized that also according to the results of the conciliation meeting held on December 29, 2022, the Ministry of Environment did not inform PAEU about the results of consideration of their unconsidered proposals.
"As an example of the European community's adequate response to crisis challenges, we at the PAEU Association draw attention to the decision of the EU Energy Ministers, adopted on December 19, 2022, regarding changes to the Renewable Energy Sources Directive (RED) within the framework of the REPowerEU plan, in particular the simplification of the ATS procedure, according to which the duty to assess the impact on the environment and implement measures to mitigate this impact is partly on the state, not on business," said PAEU President Lyudmila Tsyganok.
It was noted that the document takes into account PAEU's proposals regarding:
- production of copies of the EIA report and other documentation at the request of the public;
- setting a deadline for public discussion up to 25 working days;
- the ability of the business entity to submit a notification about the planned activity that is subject to the EIA directly to the authorized central body to obtain an opinion from the EIA.
"Taking into account the military situation of the country, the extreme need to maintain the economy and provide and preserve jobs, PAEU draws attention to the inadmissibility of the regulation of the permit procedure in terms of refusing to issue a permit document or providing a conclusion on the assessment of the impact on the environment, in which the inadmissibility of the planned activity is determined." - emphasized in the material.
As EcoPolitic reported earlier, the Professional Association of Environmentalists of Ukraine criticized part of the requirements of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources regarding obtaining permits and submitting reports for oil and gas production, in particular in delaying EIA permits .
