Translated material
Packages from the Augean stable: results of the work of the State Duma in 2024
During the year, Republic wrote more than once about new laws adopted by the State Duma of the Russian Federation. About their repressive nature. How these legislative acts violate human rights is contrary to the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the very spirit of the law. Now, on the eve of the New Year, we want to look at the work of the State Duma over the past year as a whole, in totality, in order to understand how the legislative branch influences the life of the country.
The autumn session of the VIII convocation of the State Duma ended on December 18. At the final meeting, Chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Vyacheslav Volodin summed up the work of this main legislative body of the country for 2024, listing, in his words, “dry numbers, facts, results.”
Let’s calculate the “dry numbers” too.
Parliamentary priorities
In 2024, the State Duma considered 1,086 legislative initiatives. In total this year there were 248 working days, that is, deputies considered four to five bills every day (4.38 per day, to be precise), and since each bill is considered not in one, but in three readings, this figure must be multiplied by three. That is, State Duma deputies must discuss 13 bills every day. That's 1.6 bills per hour without a lunch break. But you also have to vote for each one. The speed and productivity of Russian legislators is amazing.
Of these 1,086 initiatives, 564 became federal laws. To pass them in 248 days, 2.27 laws need to be passed every day. Moreover, during the autumn session, deputies adopted only 233 laws, which, compared to 331 laws in the spring session, is a clear decrease in productivity. Apparently, fatigue has accumulated, my fingers hurt from pressing buttons during voting.
But of these 233 laws, 68% are of direct effect. “We need to do everything to ensure that there are as many of them as possible. This means that the effectiveness of laws will increase: they will work better, and no one will be able to take them and modify them somewhere through the adoption of by-laws,” Volodin emphasized.
Volodin moved on from dry numbers to actual results. According to the speaker, “the absolute priority” in the work of the State Duma is “as before, support for the participants in the special military operation and their families.” “In total, 124 laws have been adopted in this part since the beginning of the special military operation, of which 33 were adopted during the current year and 12 during the autumn session,” he reported.
The second most important result of the work of State Duma deputies in 2024 is that they “adopted the federal budget for 2025 and the planning period 2026–2027.” According to Volodin, the adopted budget “provides all social obligations and resolves development issues and, of course, responds to the challenges that our country faces.” The State Duma chairman did not dwell in more detail on the budget for the next three years. Therefore, let’s see what he said about this on the day the bill was approved : “The numbers are huge: since 2018, the volume of budget expenditures has increased 2.5 times - from 16,713 billion to 41,469 billion rubles. Revenues are also growing - in 2025 they will amount to 40,296 billion rubles, and it is very important that the share of non-oil and gas revenues in the total volume will increase to 72.9%."
The most voluminous, fastest-growing and at the same time the most secret part of the budget is defense capability: 85% of defense spending is classified. The press release from the Ministry of Finance speaks about it very briefly and without numbers : “The draft budget provides for significant funds to strengthen the country’s defense capability to ensure the tasks of the Northern Military District. Resources will be provided (and have already been provided) for equipping the Armed Forces with the necessary weapons and military equipment, paying salaries, and supporting defense industry enterprises.” Therefore, it makes no sense to wait for details from the head of the State Duma of the Russian Federation on this issue.
Volodin spoke in much more detail about what the State Duma has done this year to combat migrants. “Since the beginning of the year, at the initiative of the State Duma, 14 laws have been adopted aimed at improving migration policy and combating illegal migration,” Volodin said. And he began to list: “A regime has been introduced for the expulsion of illegal migrants. A register of controlled persons who do not have the right to reside in our country has been created. Responsibility for organizing illegal migration has been tightened. Confiscation of money, property and valuables obtained as a result of organizing illegal migration has been introduced. The liability for falsifying documents for the purpose of organizing illegal migration has been increased. A ban has been introduced for intermediaries to participate in exams for migrants.”
Separately, he noted the law on migrant children , adopted at the end of the autumn session: “We have introduced mandatory verification of the legality of being in the territory of our country and knowledge of the Russian language when admitting migrant children to school.”
“And I want to say again: we are fighting with you precisely against illegal migration. Migrants who comply with Russian legislation, respect our traditions, culture and know the Russian language should come to us. Only this should be a condition, and we will follow this principle, promoting it through legislation and doing everything to ensure that law-abiding citizens come,” Volodin said, not at all embarrassed by the fact that the law prohibiting taking to school the children of migrants who have not passed testing in the Russian language does not hit illegal immigrants, who, as a rule, come without children, but the families of legal migrants who arrived in Russia on legal grounds.
But the “permanent priority” of the State Duma is “the protection of family, children and traditional values.” For the sake of this protection, deputies adopted a law in 2024 banning information promoting the refusal of childbearing . For the same purposes, they established a ban on adoption for citizens of foreign countries where gender reassignment is allowed.
Another “permanent priority” of deputies is “protection of sovereignty.” “We need to do everything to protect the country, to protect our citizens from unfriendly attempts to interfere in our internal affairs. And of course, from those who, having received money from other states, are trying to destroy our country by leaving here, but at the same time receiving funds from the Russian Federation, enriching themselves at the expense of citizens. The first such serious step has been taken in terms of the inadmissibility of such cases in relation to foreign agents - those who have already been recognized as agents of influence of other countries,” the State Duma speaker rode his favorite horse. Volodin did not explain how the infringement of the civil rights of those included in the register of foreign agents contributes to the protection of the country’s sovereignty - apparently, the deputies have reached complete consensus on this topic.
Vyacheslav Volodin / duma.gov.ru
Now let's take a closer look at some of the priority packages of laws adopted in 2024. In general, passing laws in thematic packages is becoming a distinctive feature of the legislative branch in Russia. Apparently, it is faster and easier to change the entire array of laws of the country, without resorting to a declaration of one’s intentions.
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