Various legal concepts in the area of proprietary rights and legal persons discussed in the Dutch-Russian project on the modernization of the Russian Civil Code.
Over the past 20 months the Russian Research Center for Private Law and the Council for the Codification of Civil Legislation, two legal advisory bodies under the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation, have worked with several Dutch legal experts from the Center for International Legal Cooperation (CILC) to bring parts of the Russian Civil Code into line with modern standards in contemporary civil legislation. This bilateral legal cooperation effort was established by a Russian presidential decree of 2008 that entrusted the Research Center and the Council for Codification with the task of designing the further modernization of the Russian Civil Law so that it better corresponds with the economic, social, and political situation in modern-day Russia.
This Dutch-Russian legal cooperation project has focused on two distinct legal fields that fall under Parts One and Two of the Russian Civil Code: proprietary rights and legal persons. In the course of the project several working group meetings and consultations have taken place on legal notions such as the state registration of legal entities, the division of legal entities, the rights of creditors of a legal entity under reorganization, the protection of ownership, the general provisions of proprietary rights, the acquisition and termination of proprietary rights, and the permanent right of ownership and use.
The various consultations in Russia and the Netherlands have put these key issues in the field of proprietary rights and legal persons in a broad international perspective, having them interlink with relevant international developments in the area of civil law. This fruitful cooperation has resulted in the preparation by the Research Center for Private Law of a draft federal law “On the amendments of Parts One, Two, Three, and Four of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation” that was presented to the Russian Presidential Administration last December. This draft law has since then been scrutinized and discussed with relevant stakeholders in the Russian legal field, and on May 16 an amended version of this draft law was again presented to the Presidential Administration.
The next step in attaining a more modern and up to date Russian Civil Code will be the introduction of this draft law by the President to the Russian legislator, the Federal State Duma, for consideration and adoption.