Amendments to the Forest Code of Russia enlarge the powers of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Russia to control forest use in regions

The respective draft federal Law elaborated by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation was presented by the Head of the department Sergey Donskoy at the meeting of the Government of the Russian Federation.

The draft law introduces a new provision regulating the issues of exercising the federal powers in the field of forest relations by the regional government authorities. In particular, Rosleskhoz is entitled to give binding instructions on exercising the delegated powers to the principal officers of the constituents of the Russian Federation.

Following the meeting, the document was approved; at the earliest possible date the draft law will be submitted for consideration by the deputies of the State Duma of the Russian Federation in the first reading.

Taking into account the real life of implementation of the Forest Code of the Russian Federation, the draft law proposes to exclude those provisions of forest legislation that are not relevant to legal regulation (for example, Part 2, Article 83 on the possibility not to delegate the powers of the Russian Federation to certain regions).

As noted by S.Donskoy, the adoption of these changes will contribute to the improvement of the legal regulation of the relations related to the management of the forest reserve lands, and will also become an effective tool to control the effectiveness of the regions' exercising the delegated powers in the field of forest relations.

This draft law brings the provisions of the Forest Code of the Russian Federation into the line with the Federal Law No. 233-FZ “On General Principles for the Organization of Legislative (Representative) and Executive Bodies of State Power of the Constituents of the Russian Federation” dated July 13, 2015.