Ensuring the environmental rights as a prerequisite for the rights to health in Ukraine and The European Union

Abstract

Introduction: The present threats to public health and lives depend directly on environmental conditions of natural sites, their pollution and exhaustion degree. Accordingly, there is a need for proper legal enforcement of citizens’ rights. Based on this, the relationship between citizens’ environmental rights and the right to health is analyzed. The aim:is to carry out a comparative analysis of legal support and correlation in the regulation of the right of citizens to a safe environment in Ukraine and the European Union, as well as to justify and formulate proposals for improving legislation on natural healing resources. Materials and methods: The national and international legal instruments regulating the rights to health and a safe environment as well as their interrelations were examined by means of analytical expertise and analysis of the jurisprudence, in particular, the comparative legal, complex, formal and logical, structural and functional methods along with analytical and empirical research tools. Conclusions: The environmental rights defined as the totality of the rights including the fundamental right to a safe environment and the right to natural resources (natural curative resources and natural resources for therapeutic and health-improving use) have to be proven a prerequisite for exercise of the human rights to health. The option proposed is for the adoption of a unified legal and regulatory instrument relating to the natural curative resources.