Autumn thoughts – Kommersant

On Tuesday, the State Duma will host the first plenary meeting of the autumn session. Its main event, as usual, will be the adoption of a three-year budget, for which, also according to a long tradition, the Communists and Socialist Revolutionaries are preparing alternative versions of the main financial document. In addition, all Duma factions plan to pay special attention to social issues, including new measures to support participants in the special military operation (SVO) in Ukraine and their family members. The expert suggests that during the autumn session the Duma may shift the emphasis from legislative work to representative work, and one of the main tasks of lawmaking itself will be “adjusting the legislation” for the 2024 presidential elections.

The State Duma Council will approve the agenda for the first meetings of the autumn session on Monday. According to the preliminary plan, on September 20 the chamber will consider in the first reading the presidential amendments introduced in the summer to the constitutional laws on states of emergency and martial law. In connection with the withdrawal of the Russian Federation from the Council of Europe, Vladimir Putin proposed to exclude from these laws the provisions requiring the Russian authorities to inform this organization in the event of the introduction or lifting of a state of emergency or martial law. At the same time, the need to notify the UN Secretary General in the text will remain.

Deputies plan to begin considering the draft budget for 2024 and the planning period of 2025 and 2026 in October, and before that, all Duma committees must study the document. In total, 441 bills are included in the consolidated plan of legislative work of the committees. This is less than in 2022 (665 initiatives), but slightly more than in 2021 (434). 52 projects were recognized as priorities by factions and committees, including 43 documents submitted by the government.

Based on the approximate program of work with priority bills posted in the Duma database, in September deputies will consider agreements submitted by the president for ratification on logistical and medical support for troops of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, as well as on mutual recognition and execution of decisions in cases of administrative offenses in the field of road traffic between Russia and Belarus. The second reading of the new version of the employment law (adopted in the first reading in March), developed by a group of United Russia deputies and senators, including the speakers of both chambers Vyacheslav Volodin and Valentina Matvienko, is planned for October. The project, in particular, establishes measures to promote youth employment (including financial support for employers when hiring young people), obliges employment services to cooperate with universities and colleges for career guidance and employment of young specialists, and proposes to take into account the needs of the labor market when approving target figures for budget admission to universities .

Plans for November include amendments to the Criminal Code from the Supreme Court, which proposed banning the detention of women with young children, and disabled people (in cases of minor crimes), as well as people suffering from serious illnesses. Finally, in December, as expected, deputies will return to consider the government bill adopted in the first reading last year, which involves the transfer of a number of government powers in the fields of economics, health care, environmental protection, education and culture to the level of federal ministries.

Representatives of all Duma factions also told Kommersant about their priorities.

“We have sent to the Duma Council, as a priority, bills that relate to social support measures for SVO participants and members of their families,” said the first deputy head of the United Russia faction, Dmitry Vyatkin. “This, in particular, compulsory state insurance of volunteers, providing military personnel with service housing, stimulating the creation jobs for veterans and SVO participants, issues of volunteering and voluntary activities. We will also continue to work on a new employment law.” When considering the budget, United Russia members will insist on the implementation of the party’s “people’s program” and national projects, as well as on the state fulfilling all its obligations, Mr. Vyatkin added.

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation intends to organize legislative work taking into account the program developed during the summer Orel Economic Forum. With the budget proposed by the Ministry of Finance, “it is impossible to solve any strategic problems,” so the communists, according to tradition, have developed their own “development budget,” which is “fundamentally” different from the government one, said MP Alexander Yushchenko: “We have proposed 12 key laws that will ensure it , including a progressive tax scale, nationalization of strategic resources, and increased funding for the education system.” The faction intends to focus its work on promoting these initiatives, the communist indicated. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation will place a special emphasis on changing the electoral legislation, since the amendments introduced over the last year “turned the electoral system into an ‘appointment’ system,” Mr. Yushchenko complained.

According to SRZP leader Sergei Mironov, the faction’s list of priorities includes socially oriented projects: increasing the salaries of public sector employees, introducing a “thirteenth pension”, abolishing personal income tax for working pensioners, one-time payments to families with children to prepare for school. “One of the most important bills – to reduce the VAT rate on socially significant goods and products to 5% – is aimed at reducing rising consumer prices,” the party member emphasized. The Social Revolutionaries also propose to establish a federal standard for SVO participants with an expanded range of benefits, including the payment of taxes. In addition, the SRZP will insist on taking measures to prevent ethnic crime and new requirements for migrants’ knowledge of the Russian language, and will also traditionally introduce an alternative budget project – with “completely different approaches in the tax, social, and economic spheres.”

LDPR leader Leonid Slutsky promised that his faction will work in accordance with the instructions received from voters during working trips, and will focus on solving pressing problems of the population: housing and communal services infrastructure, emergency housing, access to medicine and the availability of its personnel, support for families with children. The absolute priority will be to support SBO participants and their family members. “We plan to establish a special status for journalists working in the North-West region. They also risk their lives, so they must have guarantees and payments in case of injury, injury or death,” said the party leader. He also noted that deputies of the faction have already introduced a bill aimed at stabilizing retail fuel prices: “This problem is increasingly hitting the family budget and enterprises, so we will keep it under control.”

Finally, the press service of New People reminded Kommersant that back in the summer their deputies introduced “many important initiatives.” The party especially noted the bill on extending state support measures to individual entrepreneurs in the IT field, as well as amendments on the abolition of corporate income tax when grants are provided to them by innovative development institutions.

Pavel Sklyanchuk, a member of the RASO committee on political technologies, suggests that if no high-profile events occur related to the SVO or the international agenda, then this fall the State Duma will “smoothly shift the emphasis from legislative work to representative work”: “There will be several large parliamentary hearings (on issues of small and medium-sized businesses, the improvement of the Volga, etc.), an international forum with Latin American countries. Mobile meetings of the Duma Council will most likely be held every regional week.” As for lawmaking, on the eve of the presidential elections, “it is possible to fine-tune legislation related to minimizing political, economic and social risks in 2024,” the expert adds.

Ksenia Veretennikova, Grigory Leiba