Earlier, the Constitutional Court prohibited to local authorities to arbitrarily limit places for mass actions

Press Release, 15.11.2019

Yabloko’s regional branches in the Nizhny Novgorod, Chelyabinsk and Kaliningrad Regions sent appeals to the parliaments of their regions with a request to enlarge the list of places allowed for public mass events. Thus, Yabloko calls regional parliaments to eliminate the contradictions of regional laws on rallies and amend them according to the decision of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation.

The basis for the appeals of the regional branches to the deputies was the adoption of a decision of the Constitutional Court, which actually prohibits the regional authorities to decline the requests of organisers of public events under the pretext of the proximity of the sites envisaged by organisers for such rallies to government buildings, obstruction of transport or difficulty of access to social institutions due to such actions.

It should be noted that on November 1, 2019, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation adopted Resolution No. 33-P, according to which the provisions of the law on rallies of the Komi Republic restricting freedom of assembly were recognised as unconstitutional. Similar norms are contained in many regional laws, and, in accordance with Article 87 of the federal constitutional law “On the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation”, they should be repealed.