On Thursday, August 15, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine published the draft Law of Ukraine "On Amendments to the Criminal Code of Ukraine and the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine regarding the improvement of liability for offenses in the field of waste management."
The corresponding message appeared on the department's website.
The new draft law is designed to:
- Implementation of the provisions of the Law of Ukraine "On Waste Management".
- Introduction of criminal liability for violation of requirements established by legislation in the field of waste management.
- Prevention of criminal offenses in the field of waste management.
- Creation of a legal mechanism for criminal prosecution in accordance with European environmental safety standards, in particular those provided for:
- Directive of the European Parliament and Council 2008/98/EC
dated November 19, 2008 on waste and repeal of some directives; - European Parliament and Council Directive 1999/31/EC
dated April 26, 1999 on waste disposal; - Directive of the European Parliament and Council 2010/75/EU
dated November 24, 2010 on industrial emissions (integrated approach to pollution prevention and control); - Directive 2024/1203 of the European Parliament and of the Council of April 11, 2024 on environmental protection through criminal law, which replaced Directives 2008/99/EC and 2009/123/EC.
Changes provided by the draft law
The ministry offers:
- to supplement the main part of the Code of Criminal Procedure with Article 194-2 "Damage to waste management facilities",
- to supplement the main part of the Code of Criminal Procedure with Article 239-3 "Violation of the waste management procedure established by law";
- to make changes to other articles of the Code of Criminal Procedure regarding the strengthening of criminal liability in the field of waste management;
- to supplement the general part of the Code of Criminal Procedure with changes regarding measures of a criminal law nature against legal entities;
- to supplement Article 214 "Initiation of pre-trial investigation" of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
In particular, the new article 194-2 for intentional or negligent damage, destruction, destruction of waste management facilities, if these actions led or could lead to disruption of the normal operation of these facilities, or caused danger to human life and significant damage to the environment, provided for by imprisonment for a term of 3 to 10 years. If such actions caused the death of people or other serious consequences, the term of imprisonment is increased to 8 to 15 years.
According to the new article 239-3, for violation of the waste management procedure established by law, liability is provided in the form of a fine from 10,000 to 25,000 non-taxable minimum incomes of citizens, or restriction of liberty for a period of 2 to 12 years or deprivation of liberty for the same period , with deprivation of the right to hold certain positions or engage in certain activities for a period of up to 3 years or even with confiscation of property.
Comments and suggestions will be accepted within a month from the day of publication to the postal address of the Ministry of Environment: str. Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivskyi, 35, Kyiv, 03035 and email address: info@mepr.gov.ua.
As Ecopolitic reported earlier, on June 20, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine passed in the second reading of draft law No. 2207-1d "On waste management", and on July 7 its signed president.
We also talked about what according to experts , 90% of the norms of this law are dead.
