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MPs in the Rada (Photo: Vitaliy Nosach, RBC-Ukraine)
Tomorrow begins the fourth session of the Verkhovna Rada. About what the deputies will do in the coming months, on the RBC-Ukraine material.
After the summer holidays, the deputies return to work in plenary sessions. In addition to the remaining “tails” from the last session, MPs will have to consider the state budget bill for 2021 in the fall.
Around this document there will be mainly discussions, predicts in the “Servant of the people.” Members of the mono-majority still know almost nothing about their performance.
Yevhenia Kravchuk, deputy director of the SN faction, clarified that, according to the Prime Minister’s statements, the budget will set a rate of 29.1 hryvnia per dollar. In addition, the document should reflect an increase in the minimum wage to 6 thousand hryvnia from January 1 and up to 6.5 thousand, from July 1. The first round of this increase, up to 5,000 hryvnia, is scheduled for September 1. In the field of experts, this initiative was perceived in a quite ambiguous way, seeing in it a political subtext.
The deputies hope to see the state budget project in the Rada before September 15, as required by law. Now the Ministry of Finance is consulting with other government departments and agencies to agree on all the indicators, the press service of the Finance Ministry told RBC-Ukraine. After that, the state budget project will be formed and submitted to the Cabinet of Ministers for consideration.
“Of course, we would very much like to accept it in the middle or on December 20. So that this does not happen in the last nights before the New Year, as in previous calls,” Kravchuk predicted in conversation with the publication.
The Cabinet will have to convince deputies to support its state budget project (Photo: Vitaliy Nosach, RBK-Ukraine)
Last year, deputies voted in second reading for the budget before December, in mid-November. And besides, not under cover of night. Having satisfied the claims of the majority members, the People’s Servant had enough votes of his own to approve the document. It is not a fact that everything is going well this year, given the difficulty with which the parliament voted in favor of the budget revision at the end of March.
“The budget discussions will be unequivocal. In addition to the main budget committee, they will also focus on committees that are specialized for certain ministries by industry. This was the case both last year and during the current hijacking,” Kravchuk said.
Decentralization, elections and Donbass
Last year, Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented to the Rada his own version of the amendments to the Constitution in terms of decentralization. But the functions of the prefects prescribed in it drew a storm of criticism from both experts and local government representatives.
According to RBC-Ukraine, there were not enough votes for this initiative even within the mono-majority. Therefore, in January, Zelenskiy withdrew the bill for review. The “Servant of the People” says that since then the discussion of this document has continued, but there is still no final version. According to Kravchuk, the new draft will be presented to parliament at this session.
But technically, the Rada will not have time to accept it before local elections. In this session, the deputies will only be able to send it for evaluation by the Constitutional Court and vote the base (preliminary). The voting of 300 votes can only take place in the next session, after the New Year. Although the interlocutors in the single majority do not rule out that the examination of this document is not without friction and controversy.
That the deputies want to be on time before the municipal elections, it is a question once again of reforming the Electoral Code. Parliament will most likely be one of the first to consider this initiative, suggested Aleksandr Kachura (“Servant of the People”), deputy head of the Committee on State Power. According to him, the code contains a number of technical nuances that must be resolved before the elections.
In particular, they relate to the work of the National Police during the campaign. Under current legislation, the police start to monitor the polling stations 8 days before the elections. The Interior Ministry asked parliament to reduce this deadline to three days.
“On Tuesday we already voted for these changes in the committee. For example, the previous team of code authors did not pay attention to the fact that in our country we simply do not have that many police officers to guard the stations for so many days. We will have no one left to maintain order in the streets “, – explained RBC-Ukraine Kachura.
At the same time, the interlocutors in Sierva del Pueblo evaluate as minimal the possibilities of changing the resolution on local elections in ORDLO. The head of the Ukrainian delegation to the trilateral contact group, Leonid Kravchuk, asked the parliament to reconsider this resolution, as it is because of him that the other parties are blocking the negotiations in Minsk. According to Kravchuk, Russia demands to remove from the document the clause according to which the October 25 elections will be held everywhere, except in the temporarily occupied territories.
Last Wednesday he discussed this issue with the parliamentary commission for the organization of state power. But it failed to convince a significant part of the committee, the interlocutors in Servant of the People said. Many people believe that it is better to stop this issue before the election, and then it will go away on its own.
“We discussed this issue with colleagues on the commission and there is no unequivocal position on the need to change the resolution. But I think that we were wrong from the beginning, we had to point out immediately that the procedure for the elections in ORDLO is regulated by separate laws so that this resolution is more “dry”. “, – said the deputy head of the Kachura committee.
The Donbass issue may become one of the hottest in the new session of parliament (Photo: Vitaliy Nosach, RBK-Ukraine)
One way or another, MPs will have to get back to the Donbass issue. In December last year, the Verkhovna Rada extended the law on a special procedure for local self-government in ORDLO for one more year, until December 31, 2020.
This document was adopted in September 2014 for a period of three years as one of the steps to implement the Minsk agreements. Since then, the same rule that grants Donbass a “special order of local self-government” has been extended from year to year. But all the conflicting powers stipulated by this “special order” remained only on paper.
“Since January, the law on a special procedure for local self-government in Donbass ends. And it should be extended for a year, or to understand if there will be any new edition. This issue will inevitably come up in December, but it does not depend exclusively on the Verkhovna Rada Much will depend on the Normandy meeting in Berlin and the negotiation process, “explained Evgenia Kravchuk.
The Presidency anticipates that the next meeting of advisers to the heads of state of the “Normandy format” will take place before 10 September. Zelenskiy expects a meeting at the level of the Quartet leaders after her.
Democracy, taxes and the social sphere
In this session, the Rada will also carry out the second reading of the bills on the all-Ukraine referendum and on the location. According to the latest project, preference will be given to products with a high share of Ukrainian production in state purchases. According to Kravchuk, around 2,000 amendments have already been made to both documents. Therefore, the specialized committees still have a lot of work to do on these projects.
Already in the first weeks, the Rada can consider a whole block of financial initiatives. In particular, the bill of the Office of Economic Security (No. 3087-d), which the deputies were finalizing for the first reading. This law enforcement agency will identify financial crimes.
In fact, the Office should replace the tax police. According to the draft, the director of the BEB is appointed by the president on the proposal of the competition committee. The Golos faction spoke out against transferring this prerogative to the head of state.
“The creation of this body is in the interest of companies and has the support of our foreign partners. There are discussions about who should report to this body and who should be accountable to. But, in fact, these are secondary issues. main is to have it and replace it all those bodies that can influence business “, – said RBC-Ukraine, the head of the financial committee, Daniil Getmantsev (” Servant of the people “).
He specified that for the first week of the plenary session, the commission wants to present five more bills. The first refers to the exemption from payment of tourist tax to migrants. The second, on the exemption from payment of court fees in relation to the appeal against decisions on administrative offenses. The third and fourth (# 3476, # 3477) refer to support for the production of electric vehicles in Ukraine. The fifth document (No. 3016-d) – on improving the mechanism for collecting excise duties when selling tobacco products.
Also in this session, the deputies will consider in second reading Zelensky’s bill on so-called investment nannies (on state support for investment projects with significant investments, No. 3760). At the end of July, the Rada already adopted this document as a basis. They stipulate that the State will support investment projects worth more than 30 million euros.
The factor of local elections may prevent the Rada from adopting the planned bills (Photo: Vitaliy Nosach, RBK-Ukraine)
Another presidential document, which is due to be presented in parliament in the near future, is the Creative Industries Support Bill (No. 3851). As Getmantsev explained, they offer to reduce or exempt projects and companies in the field of culture and tourism from taxes.
According to Kachura’s forecasts, in this session the deputies will also be able to consider a bill on linking the subsistence minimum with the level of the country’s average wage (No. 3515). In July, the Social Policy Committee decided to recommend this document to parliament.
If the Rada supports this project, then in 2021 the cost of living will be at least 40% of the average monthly salary for 2020. Also, each year this proportion will increase by 1%. And by 2031, the subsistence minimum should reach 50% of the median wage by 2030.
Despite the big plans, no great constructiveness should be expected in the first two months of the parliament’s work. Since all parties represented in the Rada have already launched themselves into the election campaign with full force, there is a risk that the session hall will become a platform for the campaign and pre-election debates.
