KEY CONCLUSIONS

The regulatory framework needs to be systematized and focused on solving specific tasks.

“Our primary task is to systematize norms, bring them to a common denominator, and, most importantly, set forth the principle of establishing norms in the law ‘On Regulation and Oversight’, which should be based on their reasonableness and on each of the established requirements’ solving the real social problems for which they were established”, Yuri Lyubimov, Deputy Chief of the Government Staff of the Russian Federation, said.

Economic growth should be the main criterion for the effectiveness of the regulatory framework

“For the previous stages, we switched to risk-oriented supervision together with the business community, which aided us in this. And this algorithm continues to function today. As an agency, we have a need for macroeconomic assessments in the country today to control everything that has been entrusted to us — it is not enough for us to control the risk of each enterprise separately. We need to understand how this influences the economic situation in the country on the whole, and how and from what predictions we should be taking our bearings”, Anna Popova, Head, Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing, said.

“In addition to a sharp reduction in the regulatory burden on business, a review of the accumulated regulatory and legal restrictions, [we need] also a paradigm shift for business no longer to be perceived only in terms of the presumption of guilt. [We must] start looking at how to help business grow while continuing to protect the public’s interests […] Efficiency is not measured by how much and what norms and requirements have been revised, but by how much economic growth has been achieved as a result of the reform. According to international estimates, in approximately four years, a properly implemented “regulatory guillotine” yields 1–1.3% of GDP growth. This is a significant increase”, Mariya Shklyaruk, Vice President of the Centre for Strategic Research Foundation, said.

PROBLEMS

The limitations of regulation and oversight tools

“One of the major shortcomings of the existing system today is how verification is placed at the forefront as the primary, as the one and only measure carried out in regulation and oversight. […] We do not possess the tools that would allow us to solve a specific local problem without, on the one hand, seriously burdening the business while, on the other, the controller carried out the measure promptly. We need to see that verification ceases to function as regulation’s primary tool; the primary measures should be those that minimize interaction with the business while at the same time increasing the effectiveness of the regulation”, Savva Shipov, Deputy Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, said.

Contradictions between norms and their interpretation

 “We must systematize official explanations of regulatory requirements and have it fixed within the law, eliminating contradictions between the norms and their interpretation at the federal and regional levels. We must establish general principles for the correlation between the agency and the requirement that it checks; eliminate the possibility of duplication of oversight activities by different inspection bodies”, Yuri Lyubimov, Deputy Chief of the Government Staff of the Russian Federation, said.

SOLUTIONS

Transition to a risk-based regulation and oversight model

“Only those requirements that are really aimed at eliminating and neutralizing risks affecting the public interest should be the object of verification”, Konstantin Chuychenko, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation – Chief of the Government Staff, said.

“We must change the Code of Administrative Offenses, since the effectiveness of a violation supervisory measure calling for responsibility in the amount of RUB 2–3,000 effectively cancels out the supervisory authority's actions in regulation and oversight. In addition to business and the state, which regulate each other here, there are people for whom we work, and we cannot allow damage to their life and health though any actions of our own”, Popova said.

 “We need a transition to a risk-based model of regulation and oversight and a rendering of its economic feasibility, including calculation of the likelihood of adverse consequences. [...] We must clearly see that the regulation and oversight of the state protect only public interests, relating to an unspecified number of citizens, leaving the private protection to the insurance system and the court”, Yaroslav Kuzminov, Rector of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, said.

“The tax service has been applying a risk-oriented approach for many years, and in order to switch to it, risks needed to be inventoried and codified. [...] Thanks to the introduction of this approach, we have been able over the past five years to reduce the number of inspections by three times, and the amount of the additional charges has increased”, Dmitriy Grigorenko, Deputy Head of the Federal Tax Service (FTS of Russia), said. 

 “The main reason for carrying out an inspection, both planned and unplanned, should be the triggering of risk indicators, and the entire set of regulation and oversight measures must be linked into a common understandable procedure. This will make it possible to establish clear rules and give the business a guarantee that no one will come to carry out an inspection without sufficient reason for doing so”, Shipov said.

Legislation must separate substantive and procedural law 

“The improvement of regulation and oversight must take place in two ways: in substantive and procedural legal respects. All the issues that regulate the substantive aspect must be taken from the law ‘On Regulation and Oversight’, thus introducing a clear separation of substantive and procedural law”, Chuychenko said.

Ensuring the quality of new regulations

 “The Ministry of Justice is primarily focused on ensuring the quality of the new regulatory material. The law will list the goals and objectives of the introduction of requirements; principles of regulation (rules for the preparation of texts of regulatory acts in accordance with the rules of legal engineering, regulating exactly how the rules should be formulated). We are also talking about the elimination of a conflict of interest in state regulation, in particular the model whereby the supervisory authority itself establishes the requirements according to which it will carry out oversight”, Denis Novak, Deputy Minister of Justice of the Russian Federation, said.

The introduction of digital technologies to regulation and oversight

 “The introduction of digital technologies is solving a number of problems, including that of uniformity and centralization. Now, practically in online mode and at any time of the day or night, you can see what the inspector is doing and how. We can see the answers to our online inspection today in the “Consultant”, which has already partially resolved the problem of centralization, since we now answer user questions in the same way whether in Khabarovsk or in Kaliningrad. Now we see the need for legislation to more clearly define the objects and narrow the items of regulation so that everyone can understand the requirements as well as provide for their clear profiling”, Vsevolod Vukolov, Head of the Federal Labor and Employment Service, said.