General provisions on objects in the 2026 draft civil code of Ukraine: a new life

The article is devoted to the study of the general provisions on the objects of private legal relations in the 2026 Draft Civil Code of Ukraine as a component of the recodification process of Ukrainian civil legislation. The relevance of the topic is determined by the large-scale reform of civil legislation, the need to adapt legal regulation to contemporary socio-economic transformations, as well as the emergence of new objects that are not covered by traditional civil law approaches.

The methodological framework of the research is based on formal-legal, systemic, structural, comparative-legal, and doctrinal methods. The study includes a comparative analysis of the provisions of the current Civil Code of Ukraine and the 2026 Draft Civil Code of Ukraine, as well as the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and contemporary approaches of civil law doctrine.

The article establishes that the Draft Civil Code of Ukraine changes the approach to the regulation of objects of private legal relations by shifting from an enumerative to a definitional method of determining the concept of an object. It is substantiated that the general provisions on objects should perform a system-forming function and determine the conceptual foundations of the legal regime of particular goods as objects. The structural transformations of the provisions on objects are analyzed, including the exclusion of the chapter «Intangible Goods» and the transfer of provisions on money, securities, and the classification of things to Book III «Property Law». It is demonstrated that such changes are conceptually inconsistent, as they disrupt the internal systematic coherence of the Civil Code and blur the distinction between general and special provisions.

Particular attention is devoted to the problems of defining a thing, property, and personal goods. It is established that the Draft Civil Code of Ukraine simultaneously combines classical and extended approaches to the concept of a thing, which creates internal contradictions. The necessity of understanding property through the criterion of economical value, taking into account the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, is substantiated. The article concludes that the Draft Civil Code of Ukraine requires further conceptual refinement in order to ensure its internal coherence and compliance with contemporary civil law doctrine and European standards.