EFFECTIVENESS OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION, INSTITUTIONAL AND REGULATORY SUPPORT FOR THE ECOLOGIZATION OF UKRAINE’S AGRICULTURAL SECTOR

Abstract

The development of international trade forces exporters to study the requirements of international standards for product and service certification. Priority steps to improve practical results in the field of European integration regarding environmental protection and rational use of natural resources in Ukraine should include: adaptation and harmonization of legislative and regulatory documents in the sector, taking into account existing laws and regulations; the introduction of cleaner technologies; the creation of consortia and alliances between Ukrainian enterprises and powerful EU companies; dissemination of information about investment needs and opportunities in Ukrainian agricultural production, and more. It has been proven that increasing export volumes stimulates the implementation of management systems (for example, the requirements of DSTU ISO 14000, 9000, and others). It is substantiated that the fastest option for harmonization is accession to international documents that establish legal standards in specific sectors through an “evolutionary” or “revolutionary” approach to the process of aligning legislation. In practice, the state implements harmonization by directly incorporating EU legal provisions (without significant changes) into Ukrainian legislation. Direct and indirect methods for determining the effectiveness of standardization in the agricultural business sector have been tested. It is proven that the advantage of indirect methods over direct methods lies in the smaller volume of information required on the implementation and use of standards. Therefore, indirect methods are predominantly used at the national level, while direct methods are applied at the level of enterprises, farms, and specific territories. Indirect methods also allow for accounting of hidden (synergetic) effects of new standards, as well as determining the effectiveness of general and fundamental standards – which is particularly characteristic of environmental standardization and certification standards in the field of natural resource use and the “green” economy. It is noted that determining economic efficiency is advisable both in physical and integrated indicators, which is explained by the presence of effects that cannot be directly measured. According to the results of calculating the economic efficiency of European integration, institutional, and regulatory support for the ecologization of Ukraine’s agricultural sector, it was found that certification of rapeseed cultivation processes (presence of a certified system) and subsequent export at world prices provides the state with profit 1.23 times greater compared to domestic prices. Under the second scenario – reflecting the establishment of institutional support for environmental certification of agricultural production within the system of agrarian natural resource management – the effect differs only slightly from the first scenario. However, the costs of institutional support for environmental certification (on average in recent years) are 76.5 times lower than in the first scenario. This demonstrates the efficiency of implementing certified management systems under a systematic approach to environmental certification tasks in agricultural natural resource management – namely: environmental standards and auditing, motivation for rational resource use, information technologies for monitoring systems, life-cycle tracking, storage, logistics, product labeling, and more.