Senators and deputies talked about expanding their supervisory powers

On Tuesday, the Federation Council hosted a round table dedicated to the institution of parliamentary control. According to senators and deputies, after the expansion of the constitutional powers of the Federal Assembly, there was a need to improve the control functions provided to it, for example, to clarify the law on parliamentary investigation. Regional deputies are also waiting for additional opportunities in this area.

The event was opened by Vyacheslav Nagovitsyn, First Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Rules and Organization of Parliamentary Activities. He recalled that the institution of parliamentary control developed consistently and based on emerging practice. Thus, the Federal Assembly received its first such experience in 2004, when a commission was created to investigate the circumstances of the terrorist attack in Beslan. In 2009, the upper and lower chambers were concerned with finding out the causes of the accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station, in 2022 – with an investigation into the activities of American biological laboratories in Ukraine, and already in 2023 – with “criminal actions of the Kiev regime” against minors.

According to Mr. Nagovitsyn, the practice of these investigations has shown that the relevant federal law, adopted in 2004, needs clarification. For example, now it allows only domestic experts to be involved in the work of the commission, but “to achieve maximum efficiency and objectivity” it is necessary to consider the possibility of inviting foreign specialists, the senator emphasized.

“Another problem concerns the timing of the parliamentary investigation,” Mr. Nagovitsyn continued. “As you know, this is a year. At the same time, the complexity and versatility of the issue and the specifics of the parliamentary investigation may necessitate extending the commission’s work period. Unfortunately, such a mechanism is not provided for in the law.” According to the senator, the law needs to establish specific grounds for extending the investigation and its maximum possible period.

Vyacheslav Nagovitsyn also drew attention to the problem of unifying parliamentary control at the regional level, since the relevant federal law adopted in 2013 does not apply to legislative assemblies of constituent entities, but all of them, in one form or another, use its norms directly enshrined in local charters and constitutions.

Next was the first deputy chairman of the State Duma control committee, Mikhail Romanov, who stated that the “legalization” of the control activities of parliament actually occurred only in 2020, when, as part of the constitutional reform, the corresponding powers of the Federal Assembly were enshrined in Art. 103.1 of the Basic Law of the Russian Federation. At the same time, the powers of parliament themselves were expanded, especially in terms of interaction with the government: the State Duma received the right to approve the chairman of the government, his deputies and “civilian” ministers, and the Federation Council – to hold consultations with the president on candidacies for ministers of the power bloc.

According to Mr. Romanov, one of the most important forms of parliamentary control is the “government clock,” which takes place in both the upper and lower houses, since relevant committees and factions participate in their preparation. Following the results of each such event, the State Duma adopts a resolution, although to date such a requirement has not been established, the deputy continued: “An adopted resolution is already a normative legal act that is subject to execution and control and allows us to monitor how instructions are being carried out during the reporting period State Duma”.

Mikhail Romanov said that the relevant State Duma committee has specific proposals for amendments to the federal laws on parliamentary investigation and parliamentary control, but did not provide details of these changes at the round table.

Representatives of regional parliaments also took part in the event. The Chairman of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg Committee on Legislation, Vsevolod Belikov, proposed a specific amendment to his federal colleagues: to enshrine in the law “On the General Principles of the Organization of Public Power in the Subjects of the Russian Federation” the right of regional parliaments to send requests to federal executive authorities. “Very often, when contacting authorities located outside our federal district, we are faced with a situation where each entity has its own forms and names, and sometimes this simply prevents our federal colleagues from correctly assessing and correlating the essence of the requested appeal with the context of what is happening,” explained Mr. Belikov.

Andrey Prah