At the last plenary meeting of the 9th Supreme Council session MPs considered two packages of bills, one of which suggested to raise the age limit of tenure of the Constitution Court judges to 65 years, and another one aimed at introducing the notion of «foreign agent», regulating activities of non-profit organisations. Both packages failed to win the required number of votes. They will be reconsidered during the autumn session.
When discussing the first package, a group of deputies proposed to amend the Constitution and a number of laws to substitute the restriction of the age limit of tenure for Constitution Court judges (65 years) for the age limit of assignment to this position (58 years). The authors substantiated the amendments with the necessity of harmonisation with the Russian legislation.
The president, in turn, had sent in a negative opinion on this draft law, noting that «proposed amendments are incremental and do not take into account the specifics of the formation of Russia's constitutional court.» «The president believes it is not viable to provide incremental amendments and thinks it possible to consider this issue in package when the judicial system is reformed as a whole," added the president's plenipotentiary to the Supreme Council, Irina Barbarosh.
The minister of justice, Olga Zvarych, also recalled that «not once were draft laws on changing the age limit of tenure for Supreme and Arbitration Court judges submitted to the Supreme Council for consideration, but they were rejected.»
The deputy, Vyacheslav Tobukh, also backed the idea to carry out a holistic consideration of issues related to the formation of the Constitutional Court. «We can't use segmental approach when it comes to the application of the Russian legislation," the MP expressed confidence.
Following the plenary session, the members of the Supreme Council Presidium held a press conference where they summed up the results of the spring session.
