Russian Federation Council Starts Discussing Land Code

On Wednesday, at the first meeting of its autumn session, the Federation Council of the Russian Federation (the upper house of parliament) started discussing the Land Code. Chairman of the Federation Council's agrarian committee Yevgeny Savchenko was the first to speak. He reminded the parliamentarians that on Tuesday the committee members had taken a decision to recommend their colleagues to vote down the Land Code and to propose to the State Duma (the lower house) to set up a conciliatory commission for upgrading the Code. Yevgeny Savchenko stated that "the procedure of adopting the Land Code in the State Duma has shown that the opinion of the regions was practically ignored." Apart from that, the agrarian committee members do not approve the Land Code's provision which allows foreigners to purchase land." Yevgeny Savchenko was followed by the chairmen of other five committees of the Federation Council - committees for the economic policy, for the Federation, for the constitutional legislation, the budgetary committee and one for cultural affairs. Taking the floor, all of them recommended the upper house to approve the Code. According to deputy chairman of the Federation Council's budgetary committee Valery Goreglyad, once adopted, the Land Code will help settle land relations, ensure their stability on a federal level, and will make it possible to attract additional investments into Russian economy. Besides, he added, the adoption of the Land Code will put an end to "the black market of land" the turnover of which, experts think, annually makes a billion dollars in Russia.