The Railway Law requires the State Railway Administration to develop a railway environmental protection policy, which is approved by the Transport Minister, and an action programme, as well as to maintain the self-control system for environmental protection.
The railway environmental policy was developed for the first time in 2002. The policy document shall be reviewed and updated every 3 years. The current Railway environmental protection policy 2012-2020 was updated in 2017. A new policy is now being developed for the period 2021-2027.
The aim of the railway environmental policy document is to define the long-term and short-term environmental objectives of the sector, to identify the means of policy implementation that can be used to implement policies.
Railway environmental policy is a set of recommendations and recommendations that should be taken into account by national transport and environmental authorities and railway undertakings. Railway environmental policy objectives should be included or taken into account in national strategies, plans and other programmatic documents concerning environmental protection or transport development. This could be achieved by specialists of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development, the Ministry of Transport, as well as the State Railway Administration and other institutions subordinate to ministries, who are involved in preparing these documents. When preparing draft legislative acts, the recommendations of this document should be based on the development of the system of environmental policy instruments, but the list of measures needed to achieve each objective should be taken into account both when preparing sectoral laws, guidelines, manuals or recommendations, and when setting out the conditions for issuing licences for carriers. The State Railway Administration shall ensure the implementation of environmental policy in that part, which applies to public and private undertakings, by preparing draft regulatory enactments and by issuing a licence. In addition, the State Railway Administration, in cooperation with the other institutions and target groups involved in the implementation of this plan, may use the policy implementation means discussed in the document to find an optimal solution in each particular case.