From volunteers to reporters – Newspaper Kommersant No. 202 (7403) of 10/31/2022

In addition to the second reading of the draft budget in November, the State Duma will discuss bills related to benefits for volunteers, employees of the Investigative Committee and veterans. This follows from the calendar of consideration of issues published on the website of the lower house. Some projects – for example, on new restrictions for foreign agents and on the ban on the promotion of non-traditional sexual relations in the media and other means of mass communication – do not appear on the calendar, but nevertheless the deputies plan to consider them.

The main event of the month in the Duma will be the consideration in the second reading of the draft budget for 2023 and for the planning period of 2024 and 2025 scheduled for November 22 (adopted in the first reading on October 26). The deadline for collecting amendments to it is set until November 7th. In November, the Duma will also host three “government hours”, at which Ministers of Culture Olga Lyubimova (November 9), Education Sergei Kravtsov (November 16) and Health Minister Mikhail Murashko (November 23) will speak.

On November 8, the Duma will consider in the second reading the bill of the United Russia group on compensation for mobile communication services for volunteers. Now they are provided with uniforms and overalls, equipment and personal protective equipment, they are entitled to free meals and travel to and from their destinations. “This list does not currently include communication services, although they are extremely in demand in the activities of volunteers, and in a number of socially significant areas they are an integral component of their effective work,” the explanatory note says.

At the same meeting, the deputies will also provide benefits to family members of employees of the Investigative Committee. According to the government bill, one of the family members will be allowed preferential travel to the place of rest. Previously, this benefit extended only to relatives of investigators serving in the Far North and other places with an unfavorable climate. This created an imbalance with family members of prosecutors who received such benefits regardless of where they served, the authors pointed out.

In the second reading, a government bill will be considered, allowing the regions to transfer unclaimed residential premises to those on the waiting list. These include, in particular, veterans and disabled veterans of the Great Patriotic War, family members of dead veterans and disabled veterans, combat veterans, disabled people and families with disabled children who were registered for the improvement of living conditions before January 1, 2005. The Duma’s plans for November also include a draft law by deputies of the Just Russia-For Truth faction, which proposes to equalize the rights of those on the waiting list who submitted applications before and after January 1, 2005, and to establish a new limiting date – January 1, 2024.

In the first reading, the Duma will consider a bill by Senator Andrei Klishas and Deputy Pavel Krasheninnikov on the inclusion in the Russian legal system of legal entities operating in the territories of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. According to the draft, information about the legal entities of the new territories must be included in the Russian unified state register of legal entities by December 31, 2022.

The plans for November 9 include the first reading of the bill of deputies Vladislav Davankov and Alexander Demin (New People) on deferment from conscription for military service for individual entrepreneurs and heads of farms. As the authors emphasized, the document is aimed at implementing the instructions of the president and government to support entrepreneurs and provide them with “maximum economic freedom” in the face of sanctions pressure.

On November 15, the Duma will consider in the first reading a government draft that allows the media to publish information about the income, expenses and property of minor children and spouses of judges. This is done “in order to harmonize with the legislation on combating corruption”, which already provides for such a publication in relation to officials and deputies, the explanatory note notes.

In November, the second reading of amendments to the Criminal Code and the Code of Administrative Offenses on liability for evasion of duties in connection with the recognition of a person as a foreign agent is also possible. The amendments were prepared by members of the commissions of the two chambers to combat foreign interference in connection with the law “On Control over the Activities of Persons Under Foreign Influence”, adopted in the summer, which comes into force on December 1 and summarizes the provisions of various laws regulating the status of a foreign agent. The Criminal Code is mainly subject to technical amendments (the collection of proposals for the second reading was completed at the end of October). But the Code of Administrative Offenses is supposed to expand the circle of persons to whom administrative responsibility can be applied, including those who only “intend” to act as a foreign agent. True, the Duma Committee on Legislation in its opinion noted that this draft lacks clarity and unambiguous understanding in which cases a person can be classified as “intending to act” as a foreign agent. Amendments to the second reading of the amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses will be completed on November 2.

Meanwhile, the calendar for November is missing another draft law submitted by members of the same commissions. It prohibits foreign agents from organizing mass actions, and at the same time expands the list of places where any public events are prohibited (it includes, for example, railway stations, playgrounds, territories of public authorities, etc.). The draft, sharply criticized by the communists, was adopted in the first reading at the end of the spring session. Kommersant’s interlocutor in the Duma explained that the document is now “in progress and will definitely be accepted before December 1.”

In addition, the second reading of the amendments banning propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations is expected in November. In the first reading, the bills on amendments to five federal laws and the Code of Administrative Offenses, signed by almost 400 deputies, were adopted on October 27, and the deputies will collect amendments by November 10. Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, when discussing the initiatives, did not rule out that the punishment could be tougher.

Finally, another high-profile project is still waiting for the second reading – on a single operator of digital advertising structures, submitted last summer by United Russia member Artem Kiryanov. In the first reading, it was adopted at an extraordinary meeting of the Duma on July 15. The Federal Antimonopoly Service, the Association of Electronic Communications, the governments of Moscow and St. Petersburg, Avito and others have previously spoken out against the adoption of the initiative in its original form. Deputies have already postponed the collection of amendments to the second reading three times, the last of them until November 1.

Ksenia Veretennikova, Maria Makutina