Limitations of the right to environmental information

Abstract

The article is devoted to the theoretical and legal analysis of the provisions on the openness of environmental information and restrictions on the right to access such information established in international and national legislation. Considered, in particular, norms enshrined in universal and regional international acts, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as the Constitution of Ukraine, current laws of Ukraine. In addition, the limitations of access to information about the environment in the conditions of martial law were analyzed. The relevance of the chosen topic lies in the presence of competing norms in the legislation, which relate to the limitation of the entire array of information and information about the state of the environment as a separate part of it. The purpose of this article is to analyze the legislation that regulates the restriction of access to environmental information, its application in practice.To achieve the goal, the author used such methods as: analysis, synthesis, interpretation and comparative law. The results of the study are as follows: today, in the field of international law, there are still restrictions on the right to access environmental information. Such restrictions are legislated in national legislation and basically repeat the norms of international conventions. However, on a practical level, even under martial law, the right to access environmental information remains unrestricted by any additional legislation. In 
 this regard, a significant transformation is noticeable in the law enforcement of norms that enshrine human informational environmental rights, since only the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in the Decision-Making Process and Access to Justice on Environmental Matters (Aarhus Convention) reflects modern trends in legal understanding of the outlined issue, while the norms in the universal international acts adopted in the 40s and 50s are morally outdated.