Development of the Environmental legislation in Ukraine after coming into force of the Association Agreement

Abstract

After the full entry into force on 01.09.2017 of the EU – Ukraine Association Agreement one of the main tasks of its implementation was to align Ukraine's national legislation with EU law. The Agreement itself, as well as the annexes thereto, set out both the directions of this process and the specific provisions of EU acts (directives and regulations) to align with national legislation of Ukraine and timeframes of these actions. An important area of harmonization in the context of the Association Agreement’s obligations is environmental protection; its main vectors are set out in Chapter 6 "Environment" of Section V "Economic and Sectorial Cooperation" (Art. 360–366) and in Annexes XXX and XXI to the relevant Chapter 6. In total, following the Annex XXX, Ukraine has to adapt its legislation to the provisions of 26 EU directives and 3 regulations. Since that time both successes in Ukraine's implementation of the EU environmental acquis, as well as weaknesses, problems and difficulties in way to bring the legislation into compliance were revealed. Positive impact on implementation of the Agreement’s requirements was, in particular, the creation of bilateral and national mechanisms for monitoring the implementation of the Agreement, both at the institutional, organizational, legal and procedural levels, for analyze the implementation of Ukraine's commitments on a permanent or periodic basis. Among the main problems which arise during bringing to compliance are the following: lack/insufficiency of a systematic approach in the harmonization process, failure to take into account strategic guidelines and perspective development of EU environmental law, on the one hand, and features of the Ukrainian legal system, on the other hand; attempting to formally transpose EU law without proper link to national environmental law. Finally, there are many environmental issues, the regulation of which is inert to the factors of harmonization with EU law, but is important for domestic national regulation. Unfortunately, in recent years, these aspects of the development of environmental legislation of Ukraine have been constantly neglected, and all legislative activity in the environmental field has been fully focused on bringing the legislation in line with the requirements of the Association Agreement.