The expert is almost invisible – Newspaper Kommersant No. 11 (7456) dated 01/23/2023

The experts of the State Duma Control Committee recognized the work of the expert councils under the Duma committees as unsatisfactory. After analyzing open information about these structures, they drew attention to the lack of news about the work of the councils, the poor architecture of sites, the lack of minutes and agendas for meetings. In recent years, the influence of expert councils under committees has been decreasing, they are being replaced by inter-factional working groups, the political scientist notes.

At the beginning of the spring session of the State Duma, the Control Committee sent out the “Bulletin of Parliamentary Control” to the deputies. This document, signed by committee chairman Oleg Morozov (United Russia), in particular, presents an analysis of the public work of the expert councils (EC) of the Duma committees (the report was prepared by the EC under the control committee). In total, 64 such councils have been created in the Duma, with 27 out of 32 committees (there are none under the committees on legislation, on CIS affairs, on international affairs, on education, and on physical culture and sports). Most of the ECs are attached to the Industry Committee (15).

After analyzing open data from the websites of the committees, the experts of the control committee came to the conclusion about the unsatisfactory efficiency of the ES, the low level of transparency of activities and information support. According to their estimates, only 33 out of 64 power plants are actually functioning.

To date, there is no normative act regulating the activities of these councils. The analysis took into account such criteria as whether the EC has a separate website or section, as well as minutes of past meetings, the availability and completeness of information about members, the frequency of meetings, the degree of independence of the board from the committee.

News about the activities of any council can only be found through a search query on the committee’s website, news about the activity of 31 of the 64 councils has never been published, the bulletin notes. So, on the website of the Committee on Information Policy it is written that the EC has been operating under it since 2014, but “there is no information about its activity.” On several sites, with a search query, you can find a link to the EC page, but you can’t go to it (in particular, this happens on the sites of committees on property and culture).

Many councils were formed in the fall of 2021, that is, in the new convocation of the Duma, but “there is already a trend to ignore the need to post minutes of meetings,” experts say. Such a protocol was published only once – on April 15, 2022 by the Financial Market Digital Transformation Council under the Financial Market Committee. According to information on the websites of the committees, only 10 ECs have held meetings since 2021.

Just over a third of councils (23) published their compositions. Based on these data, the largest number of members is in the EC for construction and problems of shared construction (70), the smallest – in the council under the committee on security and anti-corruption (9). Most often, commercial companies (37% of members), federal civil servants (18%) and specialized associations (13%) are represented on the boards. From the point of view of industry affiliation, ES most often include specialists in the banking sector, employees of the oil and gas complex and industrial enterprises. Only six councils are completely independent and do not have committee representatives, the report says. At the same time, in the ES of the security committee, all nine members of the council are representatives of the same committee.

The authors of the study pay special attention to the composition of the EC under the budget committee, which includes representatives of international companies that left the Russian market after the start of a special military operation. In general, the experts of the control committee come to the conclusion that at the moment it is impossible to say to what extent the ES “are able to influence the quality of the adopted laws.”

This is the opinion of experts, the control committee partially shares it, Mikhail Romanov (United Russia), the first deputy head of this committee, explained to Kommersant. According to him, work is underway in the Duma to modernize the websites of the committees. At the same time, Deputy Romanov himself works with “personal experts, as it is more efficient.”

The head of the committee on family, women and children, Nina Ostanina (KPRF), believes that her committee’s EC “works great.” According to Ms. Ostanina, five meetings of the council took place last year, and its experts helped draft bills to ban power engineers and LGBT propaganda.

The need for experts in the State Duma has always existed: deputies do not have such a powerful state apparatus as in ministries, so lawyers and public figures are actively involved in lawmaking, says Pavel Sklyanchuk, a member of the political technologies committee of the Russian Association for Public Relations. In his opinion, in recent years, the influence of expert councils under committees has been decreasing, they are being replaced by inter-factional working groups and meetings with relevant authorities – this trend was set by State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin. In addition, the expert says, now factions, not committees, assess the political risks and consequences of the introduction or adoption of certain bills. The deputies themselves prefer to collect the opinions of individual trusted experts or industry business associations, the political scientist concludes.

Maria Makutina