Russian President meets Chairmen of Constitutional, Higher Court of Arbitration and Supreme Court of the country

The progress in the implementation of the judicial reform in Russia is being discussed on Thursday at Vladimir Putin's meeting with the Chairmen of the Constitutional Court, the Higher Court of Arbitration and the Supreme Court of the country.

Opening the meeting, Vladimir Putin pointed out that the judicial reform in Russia was one of the most important reforms. According to him, beginning with July 1, a new Administrative Code has come into force. This is, as he put it, "a very important event in the life of the state." The President also said that the new Administrative Code had been adopted not for the sake of "novelty" but in order to protect the citizens from unfounded interference of the state.

Vladimir Putin also said that since September 1, a new Arbitration and Legal Procedure Code would come into force. The main task of this code, according to the President, is to delimit the powers between the Courts of Arbitration and the courts of general jurisprudence.

As was pointed out by Chairman of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation Vyacheslav Lebedev, the first months of the operation of the Criminal and Legal Procedure Code have shown that the courts are ready to work with this code.

Vyacheslav Lebedev said that at the present time the experience of the work with the new code is being generalised jointly with the Interior Ministry and other law enforcement bodies.

The Chairman of the Supreme Court pointed out that the greatest amount of questions and fears of the part of the population were caused by the Code's point concerning taking into custody. In reply he said that "nothing terrible has happened with this question." He also said that this month the courts had considered 111,140 applications from the law enforcement bodies for taking under custody. Eight-five percent of the applications have been satisfied.

This meeting was also attended by first deputy head of the presidential administration Dmitry Medvedev.