The Ministry of Environment published the draft law about amendments to the law of Ukraine "About Environmental Impact Assessment" to receive comments and suggestions for conducting consultations with the public.
The draft law will help in the digitization of permit procedures, reports Ministry of Environment.
It was noted in the material that the draft law was developed to improve the norms of the current Law to shorten the terms of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) procedure and reduce the discretionary powers of the body when making decisions within the EIA procedure.
Changes provided by the draft law:
- reduction of the period of public discussion of the Notification of planned activities from 20 working days to 12;
- notification of planned activity and announcement of the start of public discussion of the EIA Report will be filled out in digital format directly in the Unified Register of EIA. The authorized body will no longer be able to reject these documents due to their non-compliance with the approved form;
- the requirement to publish Notices and Announcements in mass media is cancelled. Instead, the draft law proposes to involve territorial communities to ensure proper public information;
- the public will be able to register on the website of the Register for targeted information about the publication of information and documentation in it;
- an exhaustive list of reasons for refusal to issue a conclusion and a shortened procedure for the implementation of the EIA in case of elimination of deficiencies that caused the refusal are determined;
- fixing the grounds for which the planned activity may be deemed inadmissible.
The project of the act was developed in the department of environmental assessment, control and environmental finance of the Ministry of Environment.
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 before, The Ministry of Environment of Ukraine asked about clarifications on the EIA procedure during the war to the secretariat of the Aarhus Convention.
