A group of people’s deputies on the initiative of the Ukrainian Agrarian Council on December 4 registered in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine bill No. 9355-5 extending the land moratorium until January 1, 2020, the association said. “Despite the fact that Ukraine is constantly debating on the possible introduction of the land market, we have not yet been submitted a draft law on farmland turnover. This issue is extremely worrying for domestic farmers and raises many questions. Under such circumstances, it’s too early to talk about lifting the moratorium,” deputy chairman of the Ukrainian Agrarian Council Denys Marchuk said.
The authors of the draft law on amendments to the Transitional Provisions section of the Land Code of Ukraine regarding the extension of the ban on alienation of agricultural land were Oleksandr Bakumenko, Petro Yurchyshyn, Mykola Kucher, Valeriy Davydenko, Leonid Kozachenko, Andriy Kot, Mykola Liushniak, Serhiy Labaziuk, Valentyn Didych, Ivan Kyrylenko, Anatoliy Kuzmenko, Oleh Kulinich, and Vadym Ivchenko.
The association noted, with reference to the explanatory note to draft law No. 9355-5, that political speculation that the land market will be introduced from January 1, 2019 creates tension in the society and does not contribute to citizens’ confidence in the reforms that are implemented in the state.
The European Union is ready to begin commercial arbitration with Ukraine to lift a moratorium on exports of round timber as the one violating the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze has said. “Unfortunately, Ukraine really violates the Association Agreement with the introduction of the moratorium on round timber exports. This obligation will be considered as part of commercial arbitration. And the European Union is ready to start this arbitration between Ukraine and the EU,” she said at a briefing in Kyiv. According to the official, the lifting of the moratorium is excluded from the list of conditions for provision of macro-financial assistance by the European Union.
Speaking about the implementation of other provisions of the macro-financial assistance, in particular, the launch of automatic verification of electronic declarations of politicians and officials, the deputy premier said that coordination between various departments is underway to soon come to full ability to conduct automatic checks.
“The only problem that I see at the moment so that this system could work is changes in the legislation. The draft law from the government has been considered by the Verkhovna Rada for a very long time, maybe more than a year, the bill that regulates the automatic connection of the NACP (the National Agency on Corruption Prevention) to different registers,” she added.
