Translated material
Transfer rules
The division of capital functions between Russian cities is becoming a fashionable topic
Experts who gathered on Tuesday at a meeting of the discussion club “On the return of part of the capital’s functions to St. Petersburg”, for the most part, believe that the transfer of the Constitutional Court to St. Petersburg is a trend towards decentralization of power. Moreover, it is positive even taking into account financial, transport and human costs.The transfer of the Constitutional Court from Moscow to St. Petersburg is the restoration of historical justice in relation to the northern capital, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg Vadim Tyulpanov told the audience. “Petersburg was created as a capital and was so in not the worst times for Russia,” he said pathetically. “Each building served certain functions, and now the buildings are being destroyed!” Therefore, the speaker believes, the relocation of the Constitutional Court to the northern capital is “useful for St. Petersburg,” and also important for Moscow: “There is no other city in the world where there is such a concentration of power and business as in Moscow. Moscow is suffocating from traffic jams, but this is only part of the problem, and the main thing is that other cities are practically not developing.”
Let us recall that on March 22, the State Duma adopted in the first reading a bill on the new location of the Constitutional Court. The move of the court from Moscow to St. Petersburg was then approved by 348 parliamentarians, while 54 were against it.
To free Moscow from traffic jams, Mr. Tyulpanov advised moving the Supreme Court and the Central Bank from the capital, for example, to Nizhny Novgorod or Yekaterinburg. True, this will require significantly greater expenses than moving a CS, so you should not expect such events in the near future, admitted Vadim Tyulpanov.
The speaker of the St. Petersburg parliament was not original. According to the head of the State Duma Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building, Vladimir Pligin, various deputies make similar proposals every six months. In the summer of 2004, the State Duma considered and rejected the bill “On the Capital of the Russian Federation,” introduced by United Russia member Valery Galchenko. The author proposed moving the government to Yekaterinburg, the State Duma to Nizhny Novgorod, the Federation Council to Novosibirsk, the Supreme Court to Omsk, the Supreme Arbitration Court to Irkutsk, the Constitutional Court to Vladivostok, and the Central Bank to Krasnoyarsk . According to Mr. Galchenko, such a distribution of capital functions between several cities would help eliminate the imbalance in the socio-economic development of the periphery and the center and “de-bureaucratize public administration.” None of the Duma factions supported Mr. Galchenko’s initiative.
Nevertheless, Vladimir Pligin does not rule out that over time Moscow will have to share government agencies with other cities: “Russia is not a country of a huge single-industry town; it is necessary to develop other centers - in Siberia, in the south, in other regions. It is necessary to transfer some government bodies to large cities, and these cities will become engines of growth for the subjects of the federation.” Mr. Pligin also considers it advisable to disperse the location of large companies throughout the country, since about 80% of all financial flows are concentrated in Moscow.
The Ministry of Regional Development has already tried to create a concept for the development of “core” regions. It has not yet been adopted, partly because there were fears of the development of separatism in these regions.
Director of the International Institute of Political Expertise Evgeniy Minchenko suggested looking at the issue even deeper: “If a revolutionary situation develops, the key point for the authorities will be holding the capital. Therefore, moving government bodies to other cities is a diversification of risks.”
And the head of the Center for Social and Economic Expertise “Public Opinion” Grigory Dobromelov, surprised by the optimism of his colleagues, asked what does the transfer of the Constitutional Court to St. Petersburg have to do with the effectiveness of the court? “This is populism, which will lead to increased costs and bureaucratization,” the analyst believes. — If business moved to St. Petersburg, then the city would have a chance to become a showcase of the country. Otherwise, there will only be more traffic jams there.” According to Mr. Dobromelov, if the relocation of the Constitutional Court had meant a trend, then the Public Chamber would have been created, for example, in Nizhny Novgorod.