The land reform implemented in Ukraine for almost 30 years went through several stages, triggered a radical update of land legislation and land relations and laid the foundation for forming of a new land system in the country. In the theory of land law, completion of the land reform in our country is often associated with lifting of the land moratorium and adoption of the law on market turnover of agricultural land. Thus, themain task of the land reform is distilled down to ensuring the transition from a “nonmarket” to “market” regime of land relations. Such an understanding of the essence of the land reform in Ukraine is somewhat simplified.

The purpose of the article is to single out major development areas of Ukraine’s land legislation during the entire period of land reform implementation, and also to determine their substantive features and form an optimal methodological basis for determining the essence of development of the land reform’s legal framework and the prospects for its completion.

The author traced the following major areas in the development of Ukraine’s land legislation during the land reform period: decollectivization of agricultural land use, privatization of lands, centrism of the State Committee on Land Resources, deregulation of legal regulation of land relations and decentralization of power in the land management domain. While the first two were laid down in the “starting plan” of the legal framework for the domestic land reform, the other three ensue from certain deviations from civilizational standards of legal regulation of land relations. Thus, absolutization of the State’s role and the administrative and legal levers in reforming of land relations in Ukraine’s land legislation led to the emergence of such a line of its development as centrism of the State Committee on Land Resources, whereby land relations to a large extent arise, change and terminate with the consent of officials of public authorities which competence covers land resources. It was the State Committee on Land Resources that triggered corruption in the domain of land relations in Ukraine. The need to overcome its consequences has led to the emergence of such lines of Ukraine’s land legislation development as deregulation and decentralization.

These trends in the development of Ukraine’s land legislation give grounds for the conclusion that the goal of the land reform in Ukraine and, accordingly, the criterion for its completion is not only introduction of the agricultural land market, but also transition from the administrative and planned methods of land relations regulation based on the principle “from top to bottom”, which are characterized by dominating powers of public authorities, to the system of legal regulation of land relations inherent in a rule-of-law state, which is underlain by assurance of the priority of rights and legitimate interests of an individual, a territorial community and society, which the State should provide for.

Bibliography

Journal articles

1. Kramar O, ‘Fermery vs ahrokholdynhy’ [‘Farmers vs Agroholdings’] (2017) 25 Ukrainskyi tyzhden 20–3 (in Ukrainian).