Current state of ecological taxation in Ukraine and its improvement according to the EU experience
The deteriorating environmental situation on Earth has become over the last decades an almost general cause for concern. Many people around the world, united in environmental organisations express their concern because the Earth is our common home, and our health and well-being are dependent on it. At the same time methods of economic activities, intensification of production can lead to ecological catastrophe. Therefore, neglecting environmental issues in global and regional dimensions is unacceptable. Excessive consumption of natural resources, pollution of the atmosphere and water bodies, continuous generation of non-recyclable waste are problems that need not only general recognition, but also the adoption and implementation of effective programmes to prevent the relevant harmful effects. This is especially true of Ukraine in view of the Chornobyl nuclear plant disaster with its ramifications, but this area has not been investigated sufficiently. Unfortunately environmental pollution in Ukraine is one of the major causes of increased mortality. The world community has already implemented preventative and compensatory mechanisms that contribute to the partial restoration of the natural environment. This encourages economical use of natural resources and reduces the environmental impact of business activity. The most effective of these are the economic mechanisms that make environmentally hazardous industries switch to energy-efficient and non-waste or low-waste technologies. An important instrument of these mechanisms is ecological taxation, which is why each country creates its own environmental tax system, adapted to the specifics of economic processes. Moreover, ecological taxation is a critical tool for ensuring the country’s environmental security. Thus, the research of the ecological taxation system, its elements, efficiency of functioning has important scientific and practical value. The purpose of the study is to establish the role of the environmental taxation in ensuring the environmental security, based on the analysis of the current ecological taxation in Ukraine and the EU.The aims of the article are to consider various aspects of environmental taxation in Ukraine and the EU; to make comparisons of the ecological taxes in Ukraine and in the EU countries; to assess the fiscal efficiency of environmental taxation; to suggest the ways to improve the environmental tax system in Ukraine in order to endure the environmental security taking into account the EU experience. The following reasoning methods were used in the research: analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, comparison, generalisation and others.