| Murmansk legislators ask the Constitutional Court to ban the sale of land to foreigners The Constitutional Court resumed yesterday its consideration of a request from the Murmansk Regional Duma, which considers the norms allowing the sale of land plots to foreigners unconstitutional.
The trial in the case has been going on for more than a year, apparently because the motivation for this requirement is quite vague. The presidential representative in the Constitutional Court, Mikhail Mityukov, again confidently stated yesterday that “the legislator rightly did not introduce an absolute ban on the acquisition of land plots by foreigners in Russia, since such a ban would violate the constitutional rights of private property.” Mr. Mityukov confirmed that this norm “has important macroeconomic significance and has a positive effect on the influx of foreign investment into the country.”
As the chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation, Yuri Sharandin, told the Vremya Novostey newspaper, there are a number of circumstances that do not allow us to agree with the proposals of the Murmansk region: “The contested norms cannot be considered without a systematic connection with other norms. In the Forest Code, forest lands are withdrawn from circulation, this is 64.5% of the area of Russia. Also, foreigners cannot buy agricultural land, this is 24%. And so on. It turns out that we are talking about approximately two percent of Russian land. These are actually lands of urban and rural settlements, lands located under enterprises, that is, guarantees of investment. It seems to me that this is not the reason for the complaint. It’s just that the main applicant was always against the adoption of the Land Code, even at the stage of its development. He was against the purchase and sale of land in principle and is now simply trying to somehow change the Code.”
In addition, Murmansk deputies, in a request to the Constitutional Court, argue that the federal center does not have the right to take possession of land without the consent of the regional legislative bodies. The price of the issue is the amount of land tax and rental payments. Murmansk legislators are not satisfied, in particular, with the possible situation in which the majority of land payments will go to the federal rather than local budgets.
The fact is that according to the law “On the delimitation of state ownership of land”, adopted after the Land Code, state land should no longer remain abstractly state-owned. Each piece of state land must have a specific owner, be it local authorities, regional or federal centers. According to the law, the federal center can lay claim not only to all lands of the forest and water resources (according to the logic of the Constitution, this is national wealth), but also all lands under city-forming enterprises and social infrastructure, as well as “areas on which privatized real estate is located, which was located before privatization.” owned by the Russian Federation."
The land division procedure stipulates that the federal authorities present to the regional authorities a list of the areas they are claiming, and the regions, in turn, decide whether they are ready to give these lands to the center. Moreover, the law “On delineation...” and the Land Code allow the federal center to carry out these approvals only with the executive authorities of the regions, which prefers not to contradict Moscow. According to the deputies of the Murmansk Regional Duma, such an approval procedure is a fundamental violation of the Constitution, which states that any law on the subject of joint jurisdiction of the subjects of the federation must take into account the will of the legislative assemblies of these same subjects. Thus, according to the plaintiffs, the principles of division of powers between the legislative and executive authorities have been violated. And this could lead to the redistribution of land in favor of the center.
Speaking at the meeting of the Constitutional Court, Chairman of the Murmansk Regional Duma Pavel Sazhinov said that the draft Land Code at one time received 35 negative reviews from the constituent entities of Russia. In his opinion, when adopting this document, State Duma deputies were obliged to take into account the opinion of regional legislators, since it affects the sphere of joint jurisdiction of the Federation and its subjects. However, instead of creating a conciliation commission to finalize the draft Code, the Duma limited itself to the consent of the executive authorities of those entities whose legislators spoke out against this document.
Representatives of the State Duma during the meeting asked to postpone the consideration of the case, pointing out that there is no reliable data on the number of subjects who spoke out against the adoption of the Land Code. According to them, the State Duma received 33 regional conclusions, based on which, however, it is impossible to determine a clear attitude towards the code.
The court is expected to render a verdict on the Murmansk residents' claim within a month. Daria GUSEVA, Irina SKLYAROVA |
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