LEGAL CRITERIA OF BIOMASS SUSTAINABILITY: LAND, ENVIRONMENTAL AND CADASTRAL CHALLENGES FOR UKRAINE

The ability to fulfill Ukraine's obligations requires adapting domestic legislation to European biofuel stability criteria. The analysis of the main sustainability criteria through the prism of domestic legal features demonstrated a number of features that can significantly influence or even significantly distort the relevant provisions of European norms in cases of their mechanical transfer to Ukrainian legislation. First of all, the legislation of Ukraine does not contain norms regarding mandatory standards regarding the composition of food, fodder and energy items, does not provide for the obligations of landowners and land users to observe crop rotation, does not establish institutional and functional mechanisms for tracking and official confirmation of relevant processes. Secondly, the use of degraded and unproductive lands for the cultivation of energy crops may encounter problems of legal protection of land conservation, the most significant of which are declarativeness and formalism. In connection with the presence of objective features of national legislation and law enforcement in the field of land use and protection, the introduction of any legal mechanisms for the regulation (stimulation) of bioenergy must be preceded by a special risk test, that is, an analysis using the following basic questions: 1) does the rule of law stimulate (directly or indirectly) the expansion of the area under crops of energy crops on productive lands? 2) are effective legal measures in place to ensure compliance with optimal crop rotations? 3) are the conditions for real restoration of degraded and unproductive lands provided by their conservation in case such lands are used for growing energy plants? Complete prohibitions and mandatory prescriptions are the easiest, but least desirable step of the legislator. Fulfillment of European integration obligations in this area should take place only in a way that takes into account national peculiarities of land, environmental and cadastral legal relations.