IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF THE WELFARE STATE IN THE STRUCTURE OF PENSION SECURITY LEGISLATION OF UKRAINE: THEORETICAL AND LEGAL ANALYSIS
Authors: Polesov Sergiy 
Published: October 2024

The article is devoted to the theoretical and legal study of the peculiarities of the implementation of the legal bases of the social state in the structure of the legislation on pension provision on the actual example of the legal experience of modern Ukraine. It is shown that, traditionally, the development of pension legislation in Ukraine is considered in domestic legal science mostly outside the implementation of the legal foundations of the welfare state, which does not allow to properly assess either the level of systematic changes, their logic, or their compliance with the fundamental concept of the welfare state as the original normative "base" for the construction of the entire system of pension legislation. Such a theoretical and legal omission in practice led to a false and in many ways distorted vision of the patterns of development and modernization of pension legislation of Ukraine, separated from the realization of the concept of the social state and outside the category of ensuring the pension rights of Ukrainian citizens as mutually determined cuts to reveal the evolutionary potential of this branch of national legislation. It has been established that in the theoretical and legal dimension the formation and development of the system of pension legislation reflects a system-wide legal regularity concerning the strengthening of the determining (guiding) influence of key legal concepts and principles of legal regulation on the development of large systemic formations in the field of law (branches of law and legislation, legal and legislative institutions, etc.). The above mentioned regularity is fully implemented in the structuring, reforming and functioning of the system of pension legislation of Ukraine, which objectifies the general social needs of people and society in pension provision and constitutes a normative "section" of the pension system of the state as a whole. The corresponding structuring takes place against the background of active reform of the national pension legislation and represents an expedient and natural process of planned changes with simultaneous attempts to stabilize the normative material included in the structure of this branch of the Ukrainian legislation. The main guiding idea in the structuring of pension legislation in Ukraine is the constitutionally defined concept of the welfare state, the legal foundations of which are embodied in the content and structure of pension legislation. It has been proven that the guidelines for the consistent and systematic implementation of the above concept in the content, direction and structure of pension legislation are the following 1) the Constitution of Ukraine itself, which performs an important legal orientation function in relation to pension legislation in terms of the state's implementation of positive obligations in the social sphere, 2) legal positions of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine and courts of general jurisdiction (primarily the Supreme Court, which performs the function of ensuring the unity and uniformity of judicial practice in the field of pension disputes), which specify the legal meaning of the concept of the social state in such an objectively defined area as the system of pension legislation, as well as 3) international legal social standards in the area of pension provision, which also reflect the main substantive elements of the legal foundations of the concept of the social state. The difficulties of implementation of this concept in the structure and content of national pension legislation are determined by such factors as contradictions in the interpretation of the content of this concept; the combination of tendencies towards unification and differentiation in the structure of pension legislation, which has not yet ended with the establishment of the optimal state of such combination; the uncertainty of strategic guidelines for the development of pension legislation at the level of adoption of regulatory documents of a programmatic nature by subjects of higher state power; instability, inconsistency and a certain imbalance of the state pension policy both at the level of defining strategic guidelines and at the level of their implementation; the weakness of the state's financial and economic capabilities caused by the prolonged crisis of the country; asynchronization of the state pension policy at the level of defining strategic guidelines and at the level of their implementation; the weakness of the state's financial and economic capabilities caused by the prolonged crisis of the country; and the weakness of the financial and economic capacities of the state caused by the prolonged economic crisis in the country; the asynchronicity of the formation of different levels of the pension system; the existence of a significant "block" of non-constitutional normative material in the structure of pension legislation (which confirms the increased activity of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine in the course of consideration of pension cases); numerous violations of citizens' pension rights in the course of law enforcement, which creates an additional burden on the judicial system of Ukraine (in particular, on administrative proceedings, within which the judicial protection of citizens' pension rights mostly takes place). The comprehensive implementation of the legal foundations of the welfare state in the structure of pension legislation is considered to be on the way to further constitutionalization of this process, rational and scientifically based determination of strategic priorities for the further implementation of pension reform in Ukraine on the paths of unification and adaptation of the best world (primarily European) practices of pension provision and international legal standards, formation and implementation of a socially oriented pension policy. Keywords: pension rights of citizens, pension legislation, welfare state, Constitution of Ukraine, Constitutional Court of Ukraine, Supreme Court, pension reform, international legal norms. The main problems of the pension legislation of Ukraine are: the weakness of the financial and economic capacity of the state caused by the prolonged economic crisis in the country; the asynchronicity of the formation of different levels of the pension system; the existence of a significant "block" of non-constitutional normative material in the structure of pension legislation (which confirms the increased activity of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine in the course of consideration of pension cases); Numerous violations of citizens' pension rights in the course of law enforcement, which puts an additional burden on the judicial system of Ukraine (in particular, on administrative proceedings, where the judicial protection of citizens' pension rights is mostly carried out). The comprehensive implementation of the legal foundations of the welfare state in the structure of pension legislation is considered to be on the way to further constitutionalization of this process, rational and scientifically based determination of strategic priorities for the further implementation of pension reform in Ukraine on the paths of unification and adaptation of the best world (primarily European) practices of pension provision and international legal standards, formation and implementation of socially oriented pension policy.