The number of bills of Boris Yeltsin remaining in the State Duma will be reduced by a third

Of the six bills of the first President of Russia Boris Yeltsin, which were submitted to the first two convocations of the State Duma (1993-1999) and are still under consideration by the lower house, two will be returned to the developer (under part 4 of article 114 of the regulations). On April 17, the Committee on Legislation and State Construction recommended that the Council of the State Duma make such a decision.

The first bill (introduced by Yeltsin on August 6, 1999) provides for the exclusion from the Criminal Code (CC) of the death penalty. In Russia, a moratorium has been introduced on the use of this type of punishment. The second bill (introduced on the same day) provides for the ratification of Protocol No. 6 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, concerning the abolition of the death penalty, of April 28, 1983.

In 1996, when PACE recommended to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (CE) that Russia be invited to the organization, the condition for Russia to join it was Moscow’s intention to sign Protocol No. 6 within one year and ratify no later than three years after accession. It was signed in April 1997, and although the Russian parliament never ratified it, its effect extends to the country due to the fact that Moscow did not withdraw the signature from the protocol.

Nevertheless, as noted in the State Duma Committee on Legislation and State Construction, the relevance of the bills has lost its force, because on March 15, 2022, Russia withdrew from the Council of Europe. And on February 28, 2023, the law “On the termination of international treaties of the Council of Europe with respect to the Russian Federation” was adopted.

On April 12, the Council of the State Duma had already decided to return to the authors the draft law of 2001 on the exclusion of the death penalty from the Criminal Code. Then it was about the initiative introduced by the Union of Right Forces faction in the State Duma of the third convocation: most of the authors either lost their deputy status or died. The only member of the lower house who was a co-author of the initiative and to whom it could be “returned” was the current chairman of the committee on legislation and state building, Pavel Krasheninnikov (now United Russia).

However, in relation to the initiatives of the president (as well as to the institution of the head of state as a whole), there is no “prefix” – he is the first, second, etc. In this case, the State Duma Committee on Legislation and State Construction decided to return the bills not to Yeltsin, but “ subject of legislative initiative.

Thus, only four initiatives submitted by President Boris Yeltsin will remain under consideration by the State Duma in the near future. One of them is “On the procedure for adopting federal constitutional laws and federal laws” (the so-called law on laws, the revision of which was discussed in 2016, when Vyacheslav Volodin became the chairman of the State Duma and he called for streamlining lawmaking) and three projects for the ratification of international treaties, in including on mutual recognition of rights and regulation of property relations between Russia and Ukraine.

The return to such ancient bills testifies to the desire of the Duma leadership to “zero out” the legislative portfolio, Pavel Sklyanchuk, a member of the political technologies committee of the RASO, believes. “If in the last convocation they cleared away the “legislative blockages,” now they are “cleaning up the remnants,” he says.

Vedomosti sent a request to the press service of the State Duma, which is the reason for the withdrawal of bills on the exclusion of the death penalty from the Criminal Code.