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The president noted two significant shortcomings of the draft law.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has ruled out the adoption of a government-prepared bill to open the farmland market in Ukraine in its current version.
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"The order of our actions is not important to me. I can address our Verkhovna Rada [Ukraine's parliament] and ask it how we should do this. We won't adopt and sign it in a form that does not suit Ukrainians and rural residents ... There will be no law in that wording," he said during a press marathon on October 10, 2019.
At the same time, Zelensky added that he had not yet decided how to deal with the normative legal act already registered in parliament.
The president also pointed out two significant shortcomings of the bill, namely the unresolved issue on the sale of land to foreigners and the possibility of concentrating up to 200,000 hectares of land per person.
"This [concentration of land] is wrong. There are regions [in Ukraine] where there will be just three farmers in the entire area. It will be a monopoly again. This is a mistake. This issue was discussed with farmers and our prime minister. In my opinion, it is not a mistake, but I see that society does not accept it. I think that this issue and the postponement [of land sale] for foreigners are the two main things," he said.
As UNIAN reported earlier, on September 25, the Cabinet of Ministers tabled in the Verkhovna Rada a bill to amend certain legislative acts of Ukraine regarding the turnover of agricultural land.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk earlier said that the Cabinet of Ministers planned to launch the farmland market in Ukraine on October 1, 2020.