Resolution of the 18th YABLOKO Congress, 09.03.2016

Under the difficult economic conditions in our country the authorities must pay special attention to the support and development of small and medium-sized businesses that can provide millions of jobs, protect the labour market from destruction, give different population groups the opportunity to provide for themselves and their families.

However, the executive policy in respect of the small and medium-sized businesses indicates that the authorities set another goal on principle – to destruct small and medium-sized businesses, impede the social and economic conditions of the working people, deepen the economic crisis, destruct the existing mechanisms of management.

This way, for example, a mass-scale mopping-up of sales pavilions, where thousands of retail facilities, commercial services, public catering facilities are situated, takes place in Moscow under the pretence of unauthorized constructions control. Having destructed the first one hundred objects, the Moscow executive governmental bodies cannot rest content and are preparing a new list of buildings to be demolished. The threat of pronouncing unauthorized the facilities, which have fitted in the city life naturally and have satisfied the needs of the residents within the past two decades, leads to the sharp economic slowdown, further outflow of material, financial and humane resource from the sphere of small and medium-sized businesses.

All this takes place amid the irrational rent increase which forces even successful enterprises to close down.

A wave of unlawful demolition can reach any region [of Russia].

The law enforcement keep up with the regional authorities. The investigatory isolation wards are filled with thousands of entrepreneurs.  At the same time, the schemes of the framed-up criminal charges are always very surprising.

The federal legislative bodies also seek to compete with the oppressors of business. The State Duma of the Russian Federation is preparing a new Administrative Violations Code which accrues the penalties for economic violations to such amounts that business will not be able to exist under them.

The growth of unemployment, economic slowdown are the consequences of business suppression as well as the transformation of the city into the inconvenient place to live.

The YABLOKO part calls to realise the seriousness of the situation and take urgent measures aimed at the real, not verbal, protection of business including:

– to entrust the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation together with Business Ombudsman and Human Rights Ombudsman of Russia to check all the criminal cases which were filed against entrepreneurs and take measures to rectify  the errors of investigative agencies and adjudicatory bodies as well as the abuse of one’s position;

– to conduct a special meeting of the National Council dedicated to the protection of small and medium-sized business and invite business representatives, legislators, law enforcement representatives;

– to entrust the Federal Security Service of  Russia to check the actions of government bodies aimed at the destruction and bankruptcy of small and medium-sized businesses which takes place in a number of regions of the country.

Emilia Slabunova,

YABLOKO Chairperson