A. Background

A. Background

Till 1 January 1992 Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia belonged to the Soviet Union and had unified legislation. The Soviet Union was a planned economy governed by the administrative principle of the so called democratic centralism. The general principles of legislation were issued on the union level and the laws on the republican level had to follow the given model and therefore laws of different republics were actually copies of each other and co-ordinated under the union framework principles. During the last ten years each of the three countries have taken their own path in their transition to a market economy and unified legislation has spread into separate regimes. The separate regimes are, however, not going to drift apart in a significant manner because of strong international harmonisation tendencies. Especially Ukraine and Russia have declared that they aim at harmonizing their legislation with the EU countries. For Ukraine choosing to harmonize with the EU is connected with the plans for joining the union.  Byelorussia and Russia have a “union treaty” which apparently means that Byelorussia is going to follow the Russian example.

There are a lot of similarities as well as same kind of  institutional hindrances on the way to a market economy and modern European environmental legislation. Especially working methods and ways of thinking naturally still reflect principles and values of the socialist past. Since the state owned both all the natural resources and the means of production, environmental law was regarded as administrative law regulating how the state property is used and protected. As a civil law country the Soviet Union had the German based division to the law of obligations and the law of things (property), but the division lost its relevance in a socialist economic system where economic contracts were made between state entities and all economically significant property belonged to the state. Property law concerning land property started to be called land law regulating the use of state owned land. Since the emphasis was on natural resources and their use not on the protection of the environment, law regulating them was classified according to the types of resources: forest law, water law and law for below ground resources. Legal regulation focused on the rules for using natural resources and their management was highly administrative by nature (Ikonitskaya 1999).

Protection of the environment was not regarded as important when the general attitude was in favour for making effective use of the abundant natural resources. On the other hand there were large areas of protected nature excluded from economic use. Administration under specific ministries and state committees produced e.g. relatively strict regulations for resources management and control, which, however, were mostly aimed at facilitating to fulfil the production requirements of the state  plan, which was the measure for effectiveness. In case of accidents, the state founded a special organ to define the damage and compensate to the citizens the loss of health or the death of a family member.

In each of the studied country natural resources are still mostly owned by the state, but enterprises using them have often been privatised. Russia privatised state owned enterprises extremely rapidly, while Byelorussia has not advanced fast in this respect. Privatisation is, however, not necessarily a quick answer to the need for restructuring enterprises. In Russia in most cases the management privatised the companies for themselves with the help of the workers whom they “promised” to keep the company going. The management is now in a difficult situation: restructuring would lead to unemployment but without investing in more advanced and best available technology pollution increases and in the long run productivity will decline (Nystén-Haarala 2001). European principles such as the polluter pays, put the companies in a different situation than earlier. They –  not the state - are now the ones benefiting from economic activity and also responsible for the harm which this activity might cause to human health and biodiversity.

Not only enterprises but also municipalities are transforming. A lot of municipal services and technology such as water and sewage pipes were often taken care by state enterprises especially in settling areas dominated by one or two industrial enterprises. Now the municipality should have taken over, but it is difficult with inadequate revenues from taxes. Environmental problems and the lack of money to invest in best available technology is therefore a difficult structural problem.

Next: B. Main Principles of European Environmental Law

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