The study analyses the current provisions of the Civil Code of Ukraine and judicial practice, examines international acts of civil legislation. Considering the need to update civil legislation to the legislation of the European Union countries, as well as gradually approaching the recommendations of the European Union in the property sphere, it is concluded that Article 1 of the Civil Code of Ukraine should be modernised by moving the phrase “civil relations” to the end of this sentence, since civil relations are such relations that meet all the criteria defined in Part 1 of this article, that is, relations based on legal equality, free expression of will and property independence of their participants. Based on the analysis of the provisions of the Civil Code of Ukraine, it is proposed to replace such a feature as “property autonomy”, which should be inherent in all civil relations, with a more accurate phrase – “property insulation”. It is considered that the Civil Code of Ukraine should be designed both for relations in which their participants set the goal of making a profit, and for relations in which participants do not pursue such a goal. The study proves the need to restore the status of the Civil Code of Ukraine as a core act for all public relations with private law content. To implement the idea of the Civil Code of Ukraine as a core act for private law, attention is drawn to the need to review the mechanism for ensuring the status of the Civil Code of Ukraine as the main act of civil legislation of Ukraine. After all, the mechanism laid down in Part 2 Article 4 of the Civil Code of Ukraine turned out to be ineffective: the text of the Civil Code of Ukraine was amended by any laws without taking into account the specific features of the mechanism of civil law regulation of such relations. It is considered that at the stage of updating the civil legislation, it is necessary to return to consolidating the list of legal forms for creation of legal entities in the Civil Code of Ukraine and thus harmonise Ukrainian legislation with European approaches to regulating the institution of a legal entity, as well as a number of contracts that were forcibly excluded from the Civil Code of Ukraine in 2003 to develop and fill in the text of the Civil Code of Ukraine