2020 Constitutional Amendments in Russia: Procedure for Adoption of Amendments

Sergei Belov

St. Petersburg State University

In this post, I present the procedural issues relating to the adoption of the Russian constitutional amendments in 2020, which met the most heated debates in Russian society and among legal experts. 

All proposals for constitutional amendment must go through a standard procedure, as set out in the special federal law ‘On the Procedure of Adoption and Coming into force of Amendments to the Constitution’ (4 March 1998). This procedure is similar to the standard legislative procedure, in that amendments must pass through the State Duma (the lower chamber of the federal parliament), then through the Council of Federation (the upper chamber), but it requires one extra stage – approval by the legislative assemblies of the regions (“subjects to the Russian Federation”) – before promulgation by the President. At all of these stages, a qualified majority is required: 2/3 in the State Duma, 3/4 in the Council of Federation, and a simple majority in 2/3 of the regional legislatures.  

Working Group of 75 

On the day after the Message of the President to the federal parliament, the President announced the establishment of a “Working Group” (WG) consisting of 75 politicians (federal MPs and chairmen of regional parliaments), sportsmen, physicians, and representatives of business and professional unions as well as charitable organizations. Legal experts were a definite minority among the members of the WG. The idea of the WG was to represent both experts and different social groups, purporting to balance the representation of different ages (from 20 to 89 years old), professions and – to some extent – political parties, though no radical opposition politicians were included in the Group. The legal role of the WG was undefined from the very beginning, as even before the first working session of the WG the President had submitted the draft of the Law on Amendments to the federal parliament. The initial draft of the Law on Amendments of 2020 changed as it was corrected and expanded during the parliamentary readings in the State Duma.  

Chapters of the Constitution to be Amended 

The main target for criticism was the use of the procedure for amending the Constitution instead of the procedure for its revision. The Russian Constitution of 1993 established two procedures for constitutional changes. The first, Revision, concerns the most fundamental provisions of the Constitution – namely chapter 1 (main principles – “Foundations of the Constitutional order”), chapter 2 (the Bill of Rights) and chapter 9 (ways and procedures of changing the Constitution). Revision requires convocation of the Constitutional Assembly (according to a special law which has not been adopted yet) and all-people voting for the revised version of the Constitution. The second, Amendment, concerns changes to other constitutional provisions from those covered by the Revision procedure. The Preamble of the Constitution was not mentioned as changeable by any procedure. All changes proposed and adopted in 2020 were made as amendments to the Constitution, though critics insisted that the substance of the new provisions concerned not those provisions which were able to be amended, but those which are protected against such correction. 

First, the final proposals for changing the Constitution covered significant values and purposes declared in the preamble. Among the proposed amendments (incorporated in articles of chapter 3 - federal structure) there was a declaration of succession of the Russian Federation to the USSR, “uniting Russia with 1000 years of history, keeping the memory of ancestors, who left us ideals and belief in God”, and a declaration of the priority of the Constitution over international obligations of the state. There were also proposed provisions about sustainable economic growth and raising the wellness of the citizens, mutual trust of the state and society, protection of citizens’ dignity and respect for workers, balancing the rights and duties of citizens, social partnership, and economic, political and social solidarity. Opponents said these provisions are so fundamental and so general, being ideas rather than legal norms or principles, that they should be in the preamble.  

Second, the proper place for new regulation of social security guarantees was the ultima ratio of the opposition. The new provisions established “respect for labor”, a “state guarantee of a minimum wage not less than bare subsistence”, a “pension system on the principles of universality, fairness and solidarity of generations”, “indexation of pensions and social payments” and “guaranteed social insurance”. These clauses, in the eyes of critics, established social rights and therefore were a complement to the provisions of Art. 39 in chapter 2 – the right to social security. At the same time, these regulations concern state policy rather than social rights, and established powers of the public authorities, but not individual rights. 

Extra Elements of the Procedure: Constitutional Court Review and All-Russia Voting 

The last (but not the least) reproof addressed to the procedure of the amendments of 2020 was that certain elements of the procedure are not mentioned in the Constitution itself and were therefore not appropriate. This critique focused on the consideration of the Amendments Bill by the Constitutional Court and an all-Russia popular vote on the Bill. Both of these extra elements were introduced in the Amendments Bill itself.  

The Constitutional Court was given a power to review constitutional amendments, established neither by the Constitution nor by a law nor by the Court’s precedential practice. Unlike some of its foreign counterparts, in a 2014 decision the Russian Constitutional Court explicitly referred to its lack of competence to consider the constitutionality of a law on amendments to the Constitution. Moreover, the Court found this lack of competence also concerned the examination of the procedural issues of the law on amendments, de facto declaring this kind of law to be beyond any control of constitutionality.  

The Law on Amendments of 2020 granted the powers of this control to the Constitutional Court as conditio sine qua non of its coming into force. This was not an ad hoc granting of the power, as the Law on Amendments also included a corresponding addition to the article about the Court in the Constitution. On the other hand, this amendment would come into force only after passing through all the amendment procedures, including the consideration by the Court. However, the detailed rules about the coming into force of the Law on Amendments part by part could not escape the vicious circle of establishing the competence of the Court to review the law using this very competence.  

The Constitutional Court in its statement (zakliuchenie), delivered after the Bill passed through the federal parliament and regional legislatures and was promulgated by the President, but before the all-Russia popular vote, confirmed the compliance of amendments with all the basic principles of the Constitution. Some comments about the Court’s statement appeared on this blog in March 2020. 

The proponents of the amendments believed that the Law on Amendments could establish any additional requirements for its coming into force, as such additional requirements are complementary guarantees that the amendments are not contradicting the basic principles of the Constitution and that there is popular support for the amendments. Their opponents insisted that the procedure described in the Constitution could not be changed in any way – either by excluding elements or including new elements. The opponents argue the Law on Amendments must come in force when all the minimum constitutional procedures are fulfilled, and any additional examination or voting contradicts the established order. These arguments concerned both the consideration by the Constitutional Court of the amendments and the all-Russia voting on the approval of the amendments. This all-Russia popular vote also appeared in the Law on Amendments itself – the regulations established in chapter 9 of the Constitution did not mention such voting, either as compulsory or as an optional procedure.  

The main legal question concerning the organization of the all-Russia voting was uncertainty around classification of the voting. Russian legislation, as a general rule, uses the term “referendum” for binding popular votes. However, the Constitution (Art. 135) uses the term “all-people voting” regarding votes on its revision, and the roots of this go back to the adoption of the Constitution in 1993. Voting in 2020 was neither a referendum, nor was it “all-people voting” either (supposedly in order not to raise associations with revision of the Constitution), and it was named “all-Russia voting” to underline its exceptional character. At the same time this exceptional character meant that there was a deficit of regulation: no norms of referendum and election legislation were applicable to this vote. Because of that, brief regulations were established in the Law on Amendments, while all the detailed norms appeared in instructions issued by the Central Election Commission.  

Critics considered that the way the all-Russia vote was regulated threatened the guarantee of a free and fair campaign. No bans on campaigning for or against the amendments were established, but at the same time there were no mechanisms (such as those which exist in the election and referendum legislation) for financial support of this campaigning. As a result, the governmental “informing” about the substance of the amendments was more prominent in the streets and in many media outlets, but this information focused mostly on the social guarantees and other changes, e.g. responsible attitude to animals, etc., and not on the changes to the political system. At the same time everybody who was interested in the amendments could easily find all relevant information. 

Some other elements of the procedure were also atypical for the regulation of popular votes, though the differences were partly explained and justified by epidemiological limitations because of COVID-19. One of them was that there was three days of voting to prevent any overcrowding of the polling stations, which was unprecedented in Russia (at least at the federal level). The stations themselves were organized in many regions on the streets – also to decrease the threat of infection. 

All these parameters of voting organization became matters for criticism, though much of it focused on the substance of the amendments. 

Sergei Belov is Associate Professor of Constitutional Law, Chair of Constitutional Law Department, and Dean of the Law Faculty, St. Petersburg State University, Russia. 

Suggested Citation: Sergei Belov, ‘2020 Constitutional Amendments in Russia: Procedure for Adoption of Amendments’ IACL-AIDC Blog (30 March 2021) https://blog-iacl-aidc.org/new-blog-1/2021/3/30-constitutional-amendments-in-russia-x49bs-8ec4l.