Ensuring the human right to an adequate standard of living: accents of modern legal regulation, practice of the Сonstitutional court of Ukraine and prospects for its improvement

Abstract

The article is devoted to the research of the essence of the human right to an adequate standard of living, problematic issues, and prospects for improvement of its ensuring in Ukraine. Some doctrinal sources, provisions of international legal acts, constitutional legislation of Ukraine and foreign countries, and judgments of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine are analyzed. The research is based on systematic, comparative-legal, formal-logical, formal-legal, statistical, and prognostic methods, methods of analysis and synthesis, etc. Found that the human right to an adequate standard of living is a constitutional, basic, social right of every physical person, which is guaranteed by Article 48 of the Constitution of Ukraine, as well as international universal, and regional standards and relevant acts regulating basic human rights and freedoms. This right includes the possibility to satisfy not only basic physiological (material) needs – adequate food, clothing, household, housing, etc., but also spiritual ones – education, faith, self-realization, etc. The criteria of a decent life, the components of the human right to an adequate standard of living, the institutional basis of implementation, and the system of guarantees of its ensuring are allocated. Therefore, the human right to an adequate standard of living is correlated with other rights - to life, health care, medical aid, medical insurance, and housing. The analysis of the practice of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, in particular, decisions in cases about social guarantees of citizens, the minimum wage (tariff rate), discrimination in the implementation of the right to housing, about guaranteed pension provision, which is the main source of existence, not lower than the living wage, allowed us to pay attention on actual aspects of the components of the researched law, its effectiveness, constitutionality and legislative modernization. Emphasizing the current state of ensuring the studied right, the authors argued the need to improve the financial well-being of the population by increasing the living wage and the minimum wage in Ukraine, overcoming poverty, especially among the elderly. In particular, the need for systematic and effective implementation of the state anti-corruption and tax, humanitarian policy was emphasized. The success of such measures in order to increase the social protection of citizens, and the transformation of all spheres of life are key requirements for Ukraine's accession to the EU, which leads to an urgent process of amending and alterations to the laws and by-laws of Ukraine, improving law enforcement practice, increasing legal culture and consciousness, responsibility. It is useful to take into account the successful experience of foreign states (in particular, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, etc.), strategies, and results of reforms in this area. Key words: human rights, right to an adequate standard of living, international standards, decent standard of living, social protection, practice of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, constitutional guarantees.