The replacement of parliamentary foreign cars with domestic cars will begin in the regions

The State Duma Council on Monday discussed the issue of assigning only domestically produced cars to deputies during their work in constituencies. This measure was supported by all factions, as well as the idea of ​​​​gradually replacing foreign cars with Russian cars in the Duma fleet. The expert believes that this decision will not affect the popularity of deputies among voters, but the parliamentarians have once again demonstrated their political loyalty.

State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin announced a discussion of this issue in his Telegram channel back in early September. According to him, by that time he had already discussed this issue with the leaders of the Duma factions and found support from them. “Based on established practice, each deputy of the State Duma, in accordance with federal law, is provided with a car for the exercise of their powers in the region, which is rented annually by the executive body of the constituent entity of the Russian Federation. The State Duma transfers funds for this to the regions,” explained Mr. Volodin. “We discussed with the faction leaders the issue of assigning only cars produced in our country to deputies in electoral districts.” Everyone supported this decision.”

The speaker, according to him, also discussed with the Presidential Administration Department (APA) the issue of replacing foreign official cars used by deputies as they are written off with domestic brands. As Yaroslav Nilov (LDPR), chairman of the State Duma Committee on Labor and Social Policy, told Kommersant, all factions supported this idea, noting that the topic is “socially sensitive.”

Chairman of the Committee on Family Issues Nina Ostanina (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) told Kommersant that the topic of switching to domestic cars was discussed in connection with the formation of the Duma budget for the next year. “Deputies who visit the regions order cars. When forming a budget, you need to understand how much money to allocate and for which cars,” the parliamentarian explained. According to her, the regions will be given appropriate recommendations, but so far no regulatory document has been prepared. Let us note that on September 15, an application from the Smolensk region for the provision of transport services to State Duma deputies in the amount of 1.4 million rubles was posted on the government procurement website, but so far without the requirement that the car be domestic.

Deputy Ostanina also noted that the details of replacing the vehicle fleet used by deputies in Moscow were not discussed at the council: the issue of brands and cost of cars will be decided as new cars arrive at the UDP.

As a source in the Duma told Kommersant, it is likely that the Ford Mondeo, which ordinary deputies drive, will be replaced by a Lada Vesta, and the BMW 7 and Genesis 90 assigned to faction leaders and vice-speakers will be replaced by an Aurus.

The question remains open of what to replace the BMW 5 that the committee chairmen use. But the final word on this issue remains with the UDP.

Let us recall that on July 11, at a meeting of the Duma, Speaker Volodin proposed obliging officials at all levels, and at the same time the deputies themselves, to drive domestic cars. This happened during a speech by Finance Minister Anton Siluanov. The latter supported this idea and declared his department’s readiness to “be the first to participate in the purchase of domestic cars.” Representatives of all Duma factions also immediately expressed support for this initiative. Mr. Volodin’s idea anticipated the president’s instructions given by him following a meeting with the heads of Russian manufacturing enterprises on August 3. Then Vladimir Putin instructed the government to take measures aimed at giving officials priority use of domestic cars.

Let us note that now the Federal State Budgetary Institution “Auto Transport Plant” of the Presidential Administration Department allocates to the State Duma mainly Ford and BMW cars of domestic assembly.

Permanent cars are assigned to disabled deputies, women, heads of committees, faction leaders and vice-speakers, while other parliamentarians usually order cars from the UDP fleet.

Political scientist Alexei Makarkin believes that replacing the vehicle fleet will have a weak PR effect, because “people now pay little attention to events that will not affect their lives.” In addition, according to the expert, anti-elite citizens “are distrustful of information that the elites limit themselves.” Most likely, the PR task in this decision “was one of the components, but not the main one; the demonstration of political loyalty was more important,” says Mr. Makarkin. He assumes that no problems are expected with replacing deputy foreign cars, but representatives of some departments “may have arguments that they need special cars due to their working conditions, and there are a lot of such cars around the country.”

Ksenia Veretennikova