The thesis analyzes the main modern approaches to the definition of the concepts of “privilege”, “legal privilege”, “privilege”, “immunity”, “mechanism of legal regulation”, “legal status”, “restriction” and focuses on the ambiguity of approaches to the definition of these concepts. The work studies the place of benefits (privileges) and restrictions in the structure of the state mechanism of legal regulation of public relations, their role as components of the legal status of a person and defines the features of their regulatory provision in national legislation of Ukraine and key international legal acts on human rights.
The paper separately analyzes the issues of the legal nature and features of benefits (privileges) as a means of regulating social relations, their functions, meaning and legal grounds (legal and actual) of their provision in a social law-based state. A detailed elaboration of the content, classification and regulatory potential of legal restrictions has been carried out in this work. The mechanism of implementation of legal restrictions is investigated, emphasizing on expediency as an obligatory requirement of their introduction in a legal social state.
From the practical standpoint, the paper reveals the problem of overloading the preferential system and provides for recommendations regarding the "refinement" of the system of benefits (privileges) and ensuring accountability for cases of relevant violations or abuse.
Furthermore, it is emphasized that the general theoretical characteristics of legal benefits (privileges) and restrictions presented in the study are relevant in the context of not only general theoretical studies on this topic but also modern trends in reforming the national legal system of Ukraine in the context of European integration.
Finally, the work focuses on the relevant modern Ukrainian legislation on this issue, highlighting its imperfection. The provisions often contradict each other as well as the Constitution of Ukraine and other acts. The modern system of national legislation regulates benefits (privileges) and restrictions at constitutional, legislative and by-law levels. Some of the legislative and regulatory acts are uncoordinated and substitute each other on various grounds, such as the granting of privileges and the setting of restrictions, criteria for their classification, as well as the procedural aspects of their design and implementation.
While benefits are provided for by law only for a particular professional group or for socially vulnerable groups of the population, restrictions, in most cases, are foreseen within the definition of the legal status of subjects of their own authority. The fact that the institute of privileges and restrictions is regulated by a large number of normative legal acts, endowed with different legal force and different sphere of action, creates the preconditions for the emergence of a large number of conflicts of national legislation and the complication of further enforcement activities.
The work explores the possibilities of preventing such situations through the adoption of the relevant regulatory legal act and provides for recommendations on its structure and substance, thereby increasing its relevance from the standpoint of actual regulatory implementation and denies its purely theoretical orientation.
