Having considered the gas draft law at stake, the committee suggested that the Verkhovna Rada adopts - on the first reading - the bill No.9253 on the basics of monitoring, reporting and verifying greenhouse gas emissions.
The purpose of the bill is to regulate the legal and organizational principles of monitoring, reporting and verification of greenhouse gas emissions in Ukraine. It is virtually about creating yet another, extra, state system of environmental monitoring.
During the discussion, there was observed that the bill is not flawless, showing, for instance, inconsistency with the basic legislation on atmospheric air protection, Ukraine’s administrative offenses code and a number of other laws, including internal variances and duplications of the current legislation and so forth.
The ecology minister, however, highlighted that the bill is extremely important for the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine, and that its drafting was conditioned by a pressing need of addressing the problems of monitoring, reporting and verification of greenhouse gases through their state regulation, creating preconditions for the introduction of a trading system for greenhouse gas quotas, and that the bill had been widely supported by business associations as well. Then he asked the committeemen to prop the bill ‘as is’.
In view of the aforesaid, the committee recommended that the bill be adopted on the first reading, warts and all.