The draft law (No.3553) amends the Law of Ukraine "On Air Protection" regarding the transfer of authorities of a central executive power body implementing the government policy in the field of environmental protection, on granting permits for pollutant emissions into the atmosphere to business entities, which possess facilities belonging to the first group, to regional, Kyiv city state administrations and other executive power bodies at the local level.
At that, the draft law has not fully taken into consideration the provisions of the Association Agreement between Ukraine, on the one part, and the European Union, the European Atomic Energy Community and their Member States, on the other part, ratified by Ukraine on September 16, 2014 No. 1678-VII, which provides for a comprehensive approach to the issues of a permit system in charge of industrial emission. In particular, according to Section "Industrial pollution and industrial hazards" of Annex XXX of the Association Agreement, foreseen is implementation into the national legislation of provisions of the Directive No. 2010/75/EU on industrial emission, which provides for the establishment of an integrated permit system.
Also, amendments to Section 5 and 6 of Article 11 of the Law regarding providing regional administrations and other state administration with the right to grant permits for facilities of the first group will influence the lowering of the quality of implementation of the single state policy in the field of air protection, in particular in the international aspect, including the implementation of the provisions of the Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context.
Legal uncertainty will be created by the envisaged in the draft law substitution in Section 9 of Article 11 of the Law of the term "is defined" with a term "is formed." The above changes functions of a central executive power body in charge of the implementation of the government policy in the field of environmental protection, starting from compiling a list of institutions, organizations and establishments, granted with the right to elaborate documents justifying volumes of emissions, prior to the formation of such a list, which in its essence eliminates the need to abide by the mandatory requirements to such organizations, namely the availability of measuring laboratories authorized (certified) to conduct appropriate measurements (pollutants, emissions of which into the air are subject to regulation and for which measurement methods were approved).