The team of authors consisting of a group of people’s deputies and representatives of four organizations drafted a law that provides for transferring certain types of state-owned land into ownership of united territorial communities while empowering the State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre to control the land use and protection along with the significant enlargement of service’s powers.
The draft law of Ukraine “On amendments to certain legislative acts of Ukraine regarding empowering local governments in land management and strengthening state control over land use and protection” provides amending at least 3 Codes (land code, forest code and code of administrative offences) and 17 laws of Ukraine.
The Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO) experts analyzed the law and found its negative impact on government regulation and the presence of large corruption risks related to the unjustified and unreasonable empowerment of the State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre.
The BRDO expert Maksym Maksymenko said that a legal structure, in which one entity (the state) owns a facility and another entity (territorial communities) is empowered to administer this facility, is harmful and doesn’t ensure the efficiency of the administrator’s functions. The lawyer believes that provisions of the abovementioned draft law on delegating to local government bodies the authority to administer state-owned lands (without actual transferring the relevant land ownership from the state to territorial communities) are in direct contradiction to provisions of the Coalition Agreement of the Verkhovna Rada and the Concept of the reform of local self-government and territorial organization of government in Ukraine adopted by the Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.
According to Maksym Maksymenko, the abovementioned strategic documents don’t contain such a condition for transferring most of the state-owned lands into communal ownership as creating united territorial communities.
“State-owned land plots, with the exception of certain lands (with immovable property owned by the state; some lands, by using which the state ensures performing own functions, such as military lands, etc.) should be legally transferred directly into communal ownership that will appear with the entry of this law into force,” Maksym Maksymenko said.
In addition, authors of this draft law unjustifiably and unreasonably enlarge the powers of the central executive body in the area of land relations instead of transferring functions of state control over the land use and protection to the State Ecological Inspection of Ukraine and reserving the relevant functions for the central executive body regulating land relations. This has large corruption risks of using these powers for illegal purposes (land redistribution for the benefit of interested parties, etc.).
Taking into account the above facts, the Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO) as an expert organization can’t support this draft law without significant amendments.