The land parcel user's right to the underground space

Introduction: the article analyses the legal regulation of the underground space use. The regulation of this issue by standards of different branches of legislation is based on various approaches to classification of "underground space ", mineral resources, groundwater as objects of legal regulation, as well as to the procedure for their use. Therefore, the current legislation in this area requires a complex analysis. Purpose: to develop an understanding of the spatial boundaries of a land parcel with regard to its legal user's powers to use the underground space. Methods: the author used the system approach, methods of comparison, description and interpretation, theoretical methods of formal and dialectical logic, specific scientific methods, such as comparative law, historical legal ones and the method of interpreting legal rules. Results: the current law embodies different approaches to defining the rights of a land parcel user: the civil law approach, based on the principle cujus est solum, and the natural resource approach, providing access to natural resources based on the right to common natural resources management. Conclusions: Notwithstanding the fundamental changes in the regulation of property relations after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the relations under study have not been considerably changed. There is still differentiation of land plots and subsoil according to the purposes (types) of use, which implies a possibility to classify underground space both as a land parcel and as subsoil. Moreover, in relation to widespread mineral resources, groundwater, and space used for construction of underground facilities the current legislation follows the approach that was formed in the Soviet period: the specified objects constitute subsoil as an object of the public property right, which the state allows to be used for certain purposes by lawful users of land plots.