Determining the addressees of state support: a system of criteria in the agricultural protection legislation of Ukraine

The article examines modern agro-protection legal criteria for determining subjects of state support in the agricultural sector. The relevance of the topic raised is due to the needs of maximum optimization of the domestic model of support for the agricultural sector, including through careful analysis and elimination of legislative problems in terms of a clear, scientifically substantiated definition of recipients of assistance. Based on the research conducted, the development trends of the analyzed legal relations were traced, conclusions were drawn and a number of proposals were formulated. First, the heterogeneity of the mechanisms of state support for agriculture was emphasized, which are divided by the nature of implementation into “active type enabled”, “passive type enabled”, “active type disabled”. This is due to the fact that some agro-protection criteria are declaratively enshrined in current legislation, but do not have a real impact on social relations. Secondly, the agro-protection criteria used by the legislator when formulating requirements for the recipients of support have been identified and systematized, namely: general, organizational-legal, functional, property, social, environmental. At the same time, some features of their application have been identified: a) the combination of different criteria in the legal mechanisms of agricultural support depending on the goal pursued by the lawmaker; b) the unequal intensity of use in legislation (from the most common functional and property criteria to the least developed environmental criteria); c) the internal differentiation of individual agro-protection criteria. Thirdly, based on the results obtained, a conclusion has been drawn about the need to improve the system of mid-level functional criteria, especially in terms of unifying the terminology and legal regimes of the “agricultural producer”, “agricultural product producer”, etc. The need for gradual, careful and scientifically substantiated activation of environmental criteria for providing state support in the agricultural sector has been proven.