In a decision announced on April 12, the Constitutional Court (CC) did not support the request of State Duma deputies regarding contributions for capital repairs in apartment buildings. The idea of a "common pot", when the collected funds are distributed for the repair of buildings in order of priority, did not cause objections from the judges. In principle, according to the provisions of the Housing Code contested in the deputy's request, owners had the opportunity to choose to transfer their contributions to a special account (in this case, the money would go only to the repair of their own building), but many were not aware of the existence of such an option, and as a result, they were assigned to the general procedure by default. In addition, there were certain ambiguities regarding the state's obligations to carry out capital repairs in those buildings where such repairs had not been carried out before privatization. The adopted procedure for carrying out capital repairs (at the expense of the owners' contributions), in fact, deprived the opportunity to exercise this right, which was also contested by the deputies.

As a result, the Constitutional Court recognized the contested norms as constitutional, although they needed to be specified. This case is interesting not only for its substantive side, it is also a good example, which can be used to understand the models of the Constitutional Court's response to emerging social and political problems, as well as the ways of mobilizing the Constitutional Court to resolve them. This is all the more relevant since literally in a few days there will be a meeting of the Constitutional Court on a similar deputy request about road charges of the "Platon" system.

First of all, the atypical subject of the appeal attracts attention - a group of deputies, and in the case of capital repairs there were even two such groups (the court combined their requests into one proceeding). The fact is that for parliamentarians, mobilizing the Constitutional Court to resolve certain problems is quite problematic. In order to submit a request to the Constitutional Court to verify the constitutionality of a normative act, a group of deputies must constitute one fifth of the State Duma deputies (Article 84 of the Federal Constitutional Law "On the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation"). In the State Duma of the two previous convocations, there was simply no systemic opposition in such numbers to appeal to the Constitutional Court.

We'll have to live with the major repairs

Opinions / From the editors

The situation changed only after the 2011 Duma elections, when the number of representatives of those parties that were ready to challenge the constitutionality of a law in certain cases turned out to be sufficient. But even after this opportunity arose, the deputies were in no hurry to take advantage of it. In 2012–2015, the Constitutional Court considered only four requests from State Duma deputies. Previous requests from deputies concerned mainly political issues: in 2012, the court considered the constitutionality of the election law, and in 2013, the law on rallies. However, the Constitutional Court traditionally prefers “safe” social issues. According to our research, the average share of cases considered by the court on social issues is about a quarter, but in recent years, cases on social and labor issues have accounted for 30 to 50% of cases on which the Constitutional Court issues rulings. The deputies apparently wanted to get on the Constitutional Court’s agenda, converting social issues into political dividends. For example, in St. Petersburg, residents could see billboards of the “A Just Russia” party, which promised to protect citizens from “extortion” for capital repairs.

However, in the end, this strategy was not successful. The Constitutional Court did not side with the deputies. At the same time, if we look at citizens' complaints on social issues in general, the court supports the position of the appealing party in 61% of cases. In contrast, when considering political cases, the contested provisions were recognized as unconstitutional in only 46% of cases. The very genre of a deputy's request most often involves choosing the most odious topics on which a political decision already exists: for example, a request from a group of deputies in 2012 on Russia's accession to the WTO, a request in 2014 on the unification of the highest courts. At the same time, on private social issues, the Constitutional Court is ready to side with citizens: recent ones include positions on calculating pensions for military personnel (Resolution of January 14, 2016 No. 1-P/2016), on restrictions on travel for persons with a temporary residence permit (Resolution of February 16, 2016 No. 4-P), etc.

Therefore, the outcome of the capital repairs case did not promise any surprises, just as one should not expect them in the upcoming Platon case. However, the form and rhetoric of this decision (at the time of writing, there was only a detailed summary on the website) were also predictable. For those who closely follow the practice of the Constitutional Court, it was not difficult to predict what the rationale for the decision would be, right down to the typical wording. More and more often, the Constitutional Court suggests that the legislator specify this or that norm, more clearly spell out the criteria. However, many problems are rooted rather in the practices of law enforcement agencies (in the case of capital repairs - in the discretion of executive bodies in determining the order of houses in need of repair, regional operators in spending funds), the proposed "positivist" approaches do not remove them. In general, such predictability of the outcomes and motivations of decisions may not be bad for courts resolving disputes "on the ground", but it has never been a virtue of the highest court, called upon to set new vectors for the development of law.

The authors are a junior research fellow and a research fellow at the Institute for Law Enforcement Problems at the European University in St. Petersburg.

Standard case about capital repairs