Adaptation of Ukrainian legal regulation of discharge of pollutants to EU environmental legislation

Abstract

The problem of adaptation of the Ukrainian legal regulation of discharges of pollutants (RDP) from point sources into surface waters to the EU environmental legislation investigates. The requirements of Ukraine’s water policy to the RDP as a way to ensure good chemical status and water quality considered. It is noted that the adaptation should be based on RDP comparative studies of legal mechanisms of limitation regulation consisting of institutes of EU environmental legislation: water services, industrial impact regulation, integrated basin management, and institutes of water legislation of Ukraine: special water use and environmental safety. It was found that the main problem of adaptation is the difference between the basic environmental and political principles of the sub-institutions of the RDP. The Ukrainian RDP is based on the outdated principle of “emission - immission” for pollutants (P), which provides the economic use of the property of assimilative capacity (AC) of water bodies in all cases of limiting regulation. European regulation is carried out according to a combined approach and is based on modern principles of “precaution” and “elimination of environmental damage primarily in its source”, and the usage of AC is allowed as an exception only for priority P in some cases. The path is determined and changes are proposed to the Ukrainian water legislation that ensure the adaptation of its RDP to the European counterpart. Fast adaptation can be done by alters to the Water Code of Ukraine (WCU), which primarily consist in changes in the conceptual and categorical apparatus of the WCU and in inclusion of European terms. It is need also to change the regulatory norms in some sections of the WCU. To specify the proposed requirements some bylaws should be altered and developed. One-half of such bylaws belongs to the powers of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. The proposed changes create the completed chain of environmental and legal regulatory impact on discharging of P.