Agenda of the April plenary sessions

A package of legislations on optimization, created by deputies of both the Supreme and local councils is ready for consideration in the first reading. The authors of the new initiative were a large group of deputies. It includes 20 legislators. They propose amendments to the Constitution, the law on the Regulations of the Supreme Council and the Electoral Code.

The conceptual task of the legislations, as noted in the explanatory note, is to reduce the number of deputies, reduce the costs of the consolidated budget, and improve the formation of electoral constituencies. As the CEC Chairman Elena Gorodetskaya noted earlier, today the CEC is doing preliminary work on finding the best options for their formation.

In order to implement the designated concept, it is proposed: to amend to Article 67 of the Constitution, aimed at reducing the size of the Supreme Council from 43 to 33 deputies. Optimization will affect the city council. The reform will reduce the cost of a single voting day (about 20%), as well as by-elections, more efficient use of budget funds for the functioning of the legislative and representative bodies of state power.

Andrei Safonov noted that peculiarity of our parliament is that along with deputies who work on a permanent basis, there are also managers of large enterprises who work in the legislature on a non-permanent basis.

If legislative amendments are adopted, the new system of deputies will be elected in 2020.

By decision of members of the Presidium of the Supreme Council, the next plenary sessions are scheduled for April 10 and 24. Additions to the Electoral Code are in the list of issues submitted for discussion. The authors of the law-in-draft Igor Buga and Ruslan Gareev propose the elimination of the legal gap in terms of regulating the use of the image of an individual in election campaigning.

The deputies will also discuss amendments to the Criminal Code, presented by the deputy Oleg Petrik. The purpose of the legislative initiative is to increase the responsibility for illegal hunting.

Deputy Anton Onufrienko proposes to supplement the Housing Code with a norm that establishes that owners of premises in an apartment building should pay for utilities directly to their manufacturers. The author considers it necessary to give the government the right to establish the procedure for changing the amount of payment in case of the provision of utilities of inadequate quality and with interruptions exceeding the established duration.