LEGAL NATURE AND CLASSIFICATION OF ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES IN THE FIELD OF ECOLOGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES: PROBLEMS OF FEES AND THE REGISTRATION APPROACH

Abstract

The article examines the legal nature of administrative services in the field of ecology and natural resources of Ukraine, and also proposes their systematic classification taking into account the peculiarities of permitting and approval, registration and information procedures in the segments of subsoil use and land relations. It is substantiated that the current model of providing administrative services in the natural resource sector is characterized by regulatory fragmentation and heterogeneity, which is manifested in the absence of a unified approach to determining the lists of services, their legal consequences, procedural standards and payment criteria at the level of legislation and by-laws It is emphasized that the ratio of paid and free services in subsoil use and land administration has not only a financial and organizational, but also an anti-corruption dimension. On the one hand, free or minimal fees contribute to the accessibility of permitting procedures, on the other hand, the underestimated financial equivalent of administrative decisions that have significant commercial value creates an imbalance between public interest and private benefit and potentially increases corruption risks. The example of individual permitting and licensing procedures in the field of subsoil use shows that the economic «weight» of an administrative act does not always correlate with the established fee for the service, which requires regulatory balancing. It is established that administrative services in the field of ecology and natural resources can be classified by legal consequences (law-creating, law-amending, law-terminating), consumer entity, type of administrative act, complexity of procedures, as well as by the payment criterion. The limitations of the «register approach» are separately analyzed: the functioning of state registers as a transparency tool in itself does not eliminate conflicts of legal regulation and does not replace the need for legislative consistency. Problems of duplication of competence, formalities of participation of ASNs and corruption risks at the stage of land management formation were identified. A conclusion was made on the feasibility of further unification of legal regulation by establishing a single, exhaustive list of administrative services in the natural resource sector, determining authorized entities for their provision, procedural standards, as well as developing digitalization and openness of registers with minimizing contacts with officials and economically justified fees