Охорона ґрунтів за законодавством ЄС: загальна рамка

The article focuses on the comprehensive and in-depth study of the legal regulation of soil protection relations within the European Union. In order to provide analysis of the regulatory framework in the field of soil protection, the author defines common feature and main specifics of EU legislation, classifies it in order to understand the system and fundamental pillares of legal soil protection at the EU level, as well as to identify the main directions of its development that will impact the integration into Ukraine’s legal system. Special attention is focused on the role of the European Green Deal (January, 2020), that impliments “null tolerance” through its Zero Pollution Action Plan, aiming for soil pollution to be reduced to levels no longer harmful to health by 2050. Given the significant role of this document, it is proposed to distinguish two periods of formation and development in EU soil protection legislation: before and after the adoption of the European Green Deal. In addition, it is proposed to distinguish differentiated and integrated EU legal acts in the field of soil protection. It has been established that the first period is characterized by a set of mostly integrated legal acts, which only indirectly and fragmentarily contained and/or contain provisions on soil protection and, above all, were adopted within the framework of various policies on the agricultural sector, waste, industry, ecology, etc. The lack of special legislation focused on the problem of soil protection has resulted in low efficiency and high rates of land degradation. Regarding the second period – after the approval of the so-called Green Deal – it is noted that the EU works toward adopting the differentiated legislative acts, which conceptualise soil issues. At the same time the author underlined that the newly adopted pieces of EU legislation on soils (a new Soil Monitoring Law, Soil Strategy for 2030) provides mostly non-binding objectives and serve more as a vision and a general direction. The conclusion is made about the undeniable necessity of a comprehensive policy framework for soil protection, binding requirements and concrete measures for sustainable soil management.