Institutional and regulatory environmental monitoring approaches: EU and Ukraine

The intensification of agricultural production, combined with the obligations arising from Ukraine’s accession process, has made the design of national environmental monitoring a question of institutional capacity rather than of analytical technique alone. Monitoring systems built to record damage after it occurs cannot support the preventive management of ecological risk that European environmental policy now presupposes, and the divergence between the two approaches determines whether national data can be used for decision-making at all. The purpose of the study was to compare the regulatory framework, institutional architecture and methodological bases of ecological monitoring in Ukraine and the European Union, and to identify regulatory gaps through cases of the regulation of priority pollutants. The material comprised European Union and Ukrainian normative acts adopted between 2006 and 2026, together with the methodological protocols governing the assessment of soil condition in each system. Comparison was conducted against five criteria: the management paradigm, the legal force of the primary instruments, the architecture of data collection and validation, the composition of the soil indicator matrix, and the algorithm triggered by exceedance of a threshold value. Functional equivalents were identified rather than formal analogues, and a regulatory gap was recorded where an objective is legislatively codified but no implementing mechanism exists at the level of secondary legislation. The European system was found to rest on acts of direct effect carrying fixed implementation deadlines, whereas the corresponding Ukrainian instruments remain framework acts whose implementing mechanisms have not been adopted. Collection, verification and validation of monitoring data are concentrated in a single European institution, while in Ukraine these competences are distributed among five central executive bodies, which prevents interagency data integration. The European soil descriptor matrix covers physical, chemical and biological degradation, whereas state soil monitoring in Ukraine addresses predominantly agrochemical indicators and includes no biological ones. Threshold exceedance in the European system obliges authorities to finance restoration programmes, while Ukrainian practice retains post-factum inspection. Arsenic and hexavalent chromium are classified as hazardous chemical substances in Ukrainian hygienic regulations, yet their determination is not provided for by current soil monitoring programmes, and acetochlor, imidacloprid and co-formulants remain outside state oversight. Agrochemical certification is performed at intervals of five to twenty years. The results establish a basis for amending secondary legislation on soil monitoring and for harmonizing the national indicator list with European requirements.