{"id":787644,"date":"2020-04-28T13:43:35","date_gmt":"2020-04-28T10:43:35","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-04-29T11:51:43","modified_gmt":"2020-04-29T08:51:43","slug":"biznes-zaklykaye-vregulyuvaty-sytuatsiyu-z-vydacheyu-vysnovkiv-z-otsinky-vplyvu-na-dovkillya-na-chas-karantynu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.eba.com.ua\/en\/biznes-zaklykaye-vregulyuvaty-sytuatsiyu-z-vydacheyu-vysnovkiv-z-otsinky-vplyvu-na-dovkillya-na-chas-karantynu\/","title":{"rendered":"Business urges to issue conclusions on environmental impact assessment"},"content":{"rendered":"

On March 17, 2020, the Ministry of Energy and Environmental Protection of Ukraine published information on the cancellation of previously scheduled public hearings in the framework of environmental impact assessment procedures due to restrictive quarantine measures in the country, as the dates of public hearings coincided with the period of quarantine introduced.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There are several key stages in assessing the impact of a business on the environment: the start of the process and the preparation of the environmental impact report by the company, then comes public discussion (when the public can comment on the report, and discuss it publicly at offline hearings), then analysis by the competent authority of the information provided by the public, and finally the issue of conclusions on the environmental impact assessment and the development of further decisions regarding the company\u2019s planned activity based on such a conclusion.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus, it should be noted that according to the information provided by the Ministry of Energy and Environmental Protection, the public may send any comments, remarks and suggestions in the electronic form or by email. However, no recommendations on organizational issues were given to the companies. At the same time, offline meetings (public hearings) were canceled during the quarantine to counteract the spread of the virus.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, on April 15, the Ministry of Energy and Environmental Protection unveiled a recommendation of the opposite nature. Thus, the business has to re-initiate a public discussion (public hearings to be held during quarantine) upon the consultation with the authorized central body on the timing and venue. In other words, the public hearings had not been canceled during the quarantine.<\/span><\/p>\n

This situation is of great concern to the business community for the following reasons:<\/span><\/p>\n

– delayed conclusions on environmental impact assessment may result in significant postponement or even cancellation of company\u2019s projects (manufacturing industry, construction, etc.) and, as a consequence, possible job cuts and reduced revenues to the state and local budget;<\/span><\/p>\n

– lack of legislative regulation regarding the form of public hearings during quarantine.<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore, the European Business Association urges to find a solution to this situation, considering quarantine realities. First, to provide for the possibility of issuing conclusions on\u00a0<\/span>EIA for cases that were discussed publicly without a public hearing<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0(if they were scheduled during the period of quarantine), taking into account any suggestions \/ comments received from the public in electronic form or other postal means. Second, to provide in the future a possibility to hold\u00a0<\/span>public hearings online<\/span><\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

We do hope that the voice of the business will be heard as currently the budget-forming companies are forced to “freeze” their projects, since they has not been able to obtain conclusions on the EIA for the second month already. In addition, as for now planning a public hearing will take at least 25 working days, and yet, it is unknown when people will be allowed to gather in groups. Therefore, the business calls for adapting all essential economic activities to the new reality!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On March 17, 2020, the Ministry of Energy and Environmental Protection of Ukraine published information on the cancellation of previously scheduled public hearings in the framework of environmental impact assessment procedures due to restrictive quarantine measures in the country, as the dates of public hearings coincided with the period of quarantine introduced.\u00a0 There are several […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23406,"featured_media":261863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15564,15563],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-787644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lobbying-news-en","category-main-news-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.eba.com.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.eba.com.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.eba.com.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.eba.com.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.eba.com.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.eba.com.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.eba.com.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.eba.com.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.eba.com.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.eba.com.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}