Limiting the Recovery of Illegally Privatized Forests and Coastal Lands

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Draft Law No. 12089 became widely known in Ukrainian media as the “Mazepa Law” due to the public support and lobbying efforts of businessman Ihor Mazepa, who advocated for its adoption.

The law significantly limits the ability of the state and local governments to recover forests, coastal lands, and other public property that had previously been transferred into private ownership through unlawful or questionable decisions. If ten years have passed since such a transfer, public authorities effectively lose the ability to reclaim the asset through the courts.

For cases where the ten-year period has not yet expired, the law introduces an additional requirement: before filing a lawsuit to recover property, the state or municipality must deposit the market value of the disputed asset with the court. Critics argue that this creates substantial financial barriers to protecting public property and may discourage legal action.

Dozens of civil society organizations, including the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group, Environment-People-Law, Ecosphere, ANTS, the CHESNO Movement, and Price of the State, called on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to veto the bill. A petition demanding a veto collected more than 25,000 signatures in less than two weeks. Supporters of the law launched a counter-petition, but it failed to gain comparable support.

Despite the public campaign, President Zelenskyy signed the law. Critics pointed to the case of Kyiv’s Protasiv Yar, a green area defended by civic activist and military intelligence officer Roman Ratushnyi, as one of the first disputes potentially affected by the new legal framework.

Concerns about the legislation were later echoed at the European level. In its resolution on Ukraine, the European Parliament highlighted risks associated with the law, warning that it could significantly reduce the state’s ability to recover unlawfully transferred public assets and may effectively legitimize past land grabs involving forests, coastal territories, and other publicly owned property.

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