The new version of the funeral bill did not find support in the Ministry of Finance
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The new version of the funeral bill, prepared by the Ministry of Construction and agreed upon by all departments, has not yet found support in the Ministry of Finance. They believe that the document does not take into account the additional costs that municipal and regional budgets will incur for the inventory of cemeteries and burial sites. The situation is complicated by the fact that a significant number of cemeteries in Russia are now outside the legal framework and it is impossible to even accurately count them. Experts believe that the issue of financing and creating a register can be resolved by transferring it to the federal level, similar to the Unified State Register of Real Estate.
The draft law on funeral affairs, developed by the Ministry of Construction and sent to the Russian government and other ministries in the summer of 2023, was agreed upon by all departments except the Ministry of Finance, two sources familiar with the progress of work on the document told Kommersant. According to them, the Ministry of Finance believes that the creation of registers of cemeteries and burial places provided for by the bill will require funds from regional and municipal budgets, which will be problematic to allocate in the current economic conditions.
The Ministry of Construction and the government advised Kommersant to contact the Ministry of Finance. They confirmed to Kommersant that the document does not take into account the emergence of new spending powers of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and local governments.
The Ministry of Construction’s bill also proposes to bring de facto private funeral homes, cemeteries and crematoriums into the legal field, to deprive them of their licenses in case of repeated violations of the rules, and also to give regional authorities the authority to monitor prices for burials and sell places for family burials at auction (see. “Kommersant” dated September 19). All this is not in the current law, adopted back in 1996.
Before the Ministry of Construction’s project appeared, there was another version of the document, developed by State Duma deputies in 2022, but it passed only “zero readings.” Deputy and co-author of the document Svetlana Razvorotneva previously told Kommersant that against the backdrop of foreign policy events, “it was not the time to deal with the bill.”
To calculate the costs of creating a register of burials, you first need to decide on the exact number of cemeteries and burial sites in the country, says Alexey Suloev, president of the Association of Crematoriums. But the data available to the authorities and market players varies. The Ministry of Construction believes that there are currently 81–83 thousand cemeteries operating throughout the country, and about 600 thousand in the Union of Funeral Organizations and Crematoriums. Most of the cemeteries have not gone through the land surveying process, that is, de jure they do not exist, explains the owner of funeral homes “ Cranes” Ilya Boltunov.
The inventory of cemeteries and burial sites in many municipalities has been carried out for several years, mainly at the expense of entrepreneurs engaged in the field of funeral services, says lawyer Elizaveta Potemkina. Another option is that the mayor’s office, at its own expense, selects through tenders companies that are involved in this process. But this practice is not widespread, since, according to Mrs. Potemkina, the budgets of many cities do not even include such an expense item.
Back in 2021, the Russian government, by its resolution, recommended that regional authorities ensure the organization of an inventory of cemeteries and burial sites by the end of 2025. But this may lead to the fact that in regions where budgets are replenished unevenly, the condition of cemeteries will still not be at the proper level, says General Director of Infoline-Analytics Mikhail Burmistrov. In his opinion, financing and maintaining a register of cemeteries should be provided at the federal level, similar to the Unified State Register of Real Estate.
However, Elizaveta Potemkina predicts that the bill prepared by the Ministry of Construction will not be adopted in 2024. She argues that previously prepared versions of the draft law on the funeral business became the subject of serious disputes between regulators and business representatives, which is why they did not even reach a substantive discussion in the State Duma.
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