On July 10, representatives of the Ministry of Ecology, together with industry experts, presented to their colleagues from the EU Delegation to Ukraine and the European Commission's directorates the draft law No. 3091 "On State Environmental Control" prepared for the second reading.
This was reported by the international environmental human rights organization Ecology. Law. Human" on Facebook.
The basis of this draft law is the reform of the State Environmental Inspectorate (SEI), which has been underway for 7 years.
According to Olena Kramarenko, Deputy Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, the draft law on state environmental control is one of the main documents in the package of documents that Ukraine plans to adopt to bring its legislation closer to EU standards.
The official stated that the work of the SEI is based on outdated principles and does not meet the requirements of today. For example, in the period from 2017 to 2020 alone, the Inspectorate failed to conduct more than 7,000 planned inspections of business entities. And claims for compensation for environmental damage are often not brought to a conclusion.
Draft Law No. 3091, prepared for the second reading, provides for a new goal and objectives of state environmental control.
The purpose of eco-control – ensuring the protection of the environment, human life and health, guaranteeing environmental safety and preservation of natural territories and objects subject to special protection, overcoming the consequences of armed aggression, ensuring compensation for environmental damage.
The task of ecocontrol – prevention of deterioration of the environment, ensuring compliance with the requirements of the legislation on natural resources by controlled entities, elimination of environmental damage, including overcoming the consequences of armed aggression, compensation for damage to the environment and loss of ecosystem services.
The draft law establishes new procedures for conducting inspections of state authorities and local self-government bodies, conducting inspections of business entities, conducting operational measures: raids, patrols, and responses to calls.
Scheduled inspections compliance with the requirements of environmental legislation by business entities is planned based on the degree of risk to the environment from the conduct of business activities. Degrees of risk are divided into 3 levels:
- high degree of risk (top 100 pollutants), are checked on a scheduled basis once a year;
- average degree of risk – once every three years;
- of a small degree of risk – are not carried out.
Inspections of enterprises with a high degree of environmental risk will be carried out within 15 days. Inspections of medium-risk enterprises for the environment will be carried out within 10 days.
Unscheduled inspections for compliance with the requirements of environmental legislation will be carried out according to an exhaustive list of grounds provided by law in order to prevent abuse on the part of the environmental inspection.
The developers of the document emphasized that the draft law is aimed at overcoming gaps and conflicts in order to make it impossible for the state environmental control body to allow inspection.
The draft law provides for two types of liability for violations of environmental legislation by business entities:
- economic and legal;
- civil law (compensation for damage, including environmental damage).
It also defines a clear list of violations for which administrative and economic sanctions are imposed. The amounts of administrative and economic fines correspond to the degree of social harmfulness of the committed violation (high), including a fine for not allowing inspection.
We will remind you that for the first time it is about reforming the DEI spoke back in 2014. Only 2 years later, the then Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine, Ostap Semerak, presented the Concept of reforming the environmental control system, which envisaged the liquidation of the State Environmental Inspection and the creation of a new body. But then the matter did not progress beyond the change of the sign.
After the idea of simply changing the sign, eco-officials and legislators came up with another thought – close SEI 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.
In early 2022, industry experts were forced to remind The Ministry of Environment, that the reform of SEI, started in 2017, is still not completed. 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.
As EcoPolitic reported earlier, the Ministry of Environment declared the reform of the State Inspectorate as one of the department's priorities for 2024.
In April the State Environmental Inspection of Ukraine made public the project of the State Ecocontrol Reform Strategy, which provides for the transition to European Union standards. Opinions about him were divided: some evaluated him with skepticism, while others were confident in the correctness of the chosen path.
In May the European Commission did another attempt to force the Ministry of Environment to carry out a reform of the DEI. In her recommendations to Ukraine, she also noted the reform of the State Environmental Inspection of Ukraine among the 5 priority tasks in the field of environmental protection for 2024.
