On 24 May 2021, the President of Ukraine signed the Law of Ukraine "On Amending the Land Code of Ukraine and other legal acts on improvement of the land management"   (hereinafter - the "Law").

The main purpose of the Law is to transfer ownership of public land that is located outside the settlements, including agricultural land, from the State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre to local authorities and communities.

The Law provides for:

1. reform of the management system in the sphere of land relations; all public land located outside of the settlements within local communities will be considered as the land in communal ownership belonging to these local communities; also, the Law defines a list of lands that will not be transferred into communal ownership;
2. cancelling unnecessary permits and introducing independent control of the land management documentation through public review;
3. to solve the problems of the procedure for establishing and changing the boundaries of territorial communities, the Law provides the right to make decisions on the establishment and change of borders by the community itself through the appropriate local authority upon arrangement with the neighboring territorial community (except when this causes a change in the boundaries of settlements, districts and regions);
4. as part of the land management works to establish and change the boundaries, only those works that fix the turning points of the boundaries of the territorial community should be carried out, without carrying out any land management works within the territory of the community;
5. provision of information on documentation on land management of the status of publicly opened and accessible data in order to avoid any corruption risks;
6. integration and unification of land management, topographic-geodetic and cartographic activities and their digitalization (documentation will be developed in electronic form and certified by the developer's electronic digital signature);
7. the legal successors of the citizens having permanent use right, the right of inherited life-long ownership over the land plots of state and communal property are granted the right to acquire such a land plot;
8. introduction of professional liability insurance for land surveyors as an alternative to state control;
9. reduction in the cost of work and the length of time spent on the implementation of procedures related to land management. It is proposed to introduce verification of documentation on land management and land assessment for compliance with the requirements of regulatory legal acts by state bodies on the principle of "one touch" and "tacit consent";
10. cancellation of a separate procedure for issuing special permits for the removal and transfer of the topsoil of land plots as permissive documents;
11. application of a new simplified procedure for changing land designated use of valuable land (without involving the Parliament of Ukraine);
12. cancellation of the requirement to agree with the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine the sale of non-agricultural land plots of state and municipal property to the foreign legal entities.

The Law is extremely progressive and will allow "releasing" about 9 million hectares of land to the market. According to economists after the opening of the land market in Ukraine in July 2021 a hectare of land will cost USD 1.000–1.500. Considering that, the Law will become a very important lever for the development of the Ukrainian economy.