Justice Minister Chuychenko: we need catchall measures to protect national interests

On the eve of the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum in a TASS interview, Russia’s Justice Minister Konstantin Chuychenko talks about the Forum’s agenda amid the current circumstances, about topics of importance for Russia today to be discussed by lawyers from different countries, about the plans the Ministry of Justice has for advocates and notaries, and about the steps taken to enshrine traditional family values legally.

Q. In less than a month, St. Petersburg will host the 11th International Legal Forum. Its key theme is ‘Sovereignty in Law.’ Why was this theme selected? Which urgent and currently important issues will members of the legal community discuss? Could you say a few words now about the Forum programme?

A. We are, indeed, getting ready very busily for the Forum to be held in St. Petersburg on 11–13 May this year. So far, delegations from over 30 states have confirmed that they will be participating. 14 Justice Ministers will definitely travel to St. Petersburg, though we hope there will be more.

Our business programme features about 110 events (compared to 76 in 2022). Our Forum is a venue for interaction between members of both Russian and international legal communities, public authorities, business and academic circles.

I would like to remind the audience that, last year, we discussed with our international colleagues issues related to law amid transitioning to a multipolar world. Now is the time to talk about instruments that allow every state both to protect its sovereignty and develop within the new legal reality.

What does not sit well with us at all is the way several unfriendly states attempt to use international legal mechanisms to exert political influence in their own selfish interests disguised by deceitful propaganda.

Essentially, these actions have, if not entirely demolished the established and seemingly tried and tested international law institutions, then certainly rendered them non-functional. These institutions simply do not work. See for yourself: states' international commitments enshrined in the UN founding documents are ignored and replaced by some “generally accepted rules”. Western politicians make statements that are not merely contradictory, they essentially undermine both the legal foundations of the world order and the ideological principles inherent in any democratic state, i.e., the very foundations and principles these politicians promulgate.

Essentially, the politics of the collective West manifest total legal nihilism and a true degree of deviation from universally recognized principles of states’ sovereign equality and non-interference in internal affairs, from fundamental human rights and freedoms, including protection of property rights, personal inviolability, freedom of trade and impermissibility of discrimination. There are claims made openly that the concept of states’ sovereign immunity is no longer sacrosanct.

The examples are many. The Minsk accords proved to be a fraud and those European politicians who signed them admit this without any embarrassment. International bodies did not respond at all to the Nord Stream explosions. The large-scale blanket sanctions that run counter to the principles of state sovereign equality, international humanitarian law and global human-rights acts are in no way good or fair. Russia’s FATF membership has been suspended, thereby nullifying decades of work on countering the financing of terrorism and money laundering, while the global community ignores the corruption among Ukrainian officials. The media practice trickery as well: Russia's biggest media outlets are prohibited from working in Europe, RT is blocked in Germany and France. The list goes on and on.

Our task today is to work out catchall measures to protect national interests and prevent growing trends toward intervening in states’ internal affairs, and we need to do this in partnership with countries ready to engage in a constructive and equal dialogue. Existing international legal mechanisms need to be adapted to the new multipolar world order. This work certainly prioritizes use of legal means for bolstering state sovereignty. That is why our Forum’s key theme is ‘Sovereignty in Law’.

Transition to a multipolar world should equip states with the requisite legal tools for countering colour revolutions spurred from outside, economic pressure and blanket sanctions; they would also prevent attacks by various puppet pseudo-legal bodies such as the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

We must protect our own spiritual ideals and values, we must understand clearly where the so-called liberal values alien to us, such as several dozen genders, are about to be imposed on us. We are often rebuked for being ‘intolerant’, we are preached freedom of speech and told that the state should have absolutely no say in determining what the norm is.

But wait a moment: if I went and said in any European country that LBGT is a mental disorder and I don’t want my child to see all that, what will happen to me? I will be bullied at the very least, I will pay an administrative fine, or I will even be held criminally liable. Child protection services will get involved as well and check what kind of upbringing my children receive from such an ‘intolerant’ person who does not agree with ‘generally accepted rules’.

Such is their entire freedom of speech and opinion such is the state’s non-interference.

We will certainly discuss this topic at the Forum; we will have a session on family values at the centre of global politics. We will consider the directions the legal regulations on this might take.

Q. Incidentally, at the March meeting of the Ministry of Justice collegium, you said that the Ministry would examine legislation on compliance with spiritual and moral values. Are there any results yet?

A. We have begun auditing the current legislation for compliance with the State policy framework for preserving and bolstering traditional Russian spiritual and moral values and constitutional priorities in protecting the family, motherhood and childhood. Right now, we are focusing primarily on introducing a legal prohibition on registering sex changes in passports and other documents. The Russian legislation envisaged the option of changing sex back in 1997. At that time, various international organizations, including the World Health Organization, was calling the shots in shaping some rules.

Currently, identity papers can be modified or amended on the basis of, among other things, a sex change certificate issued by a medical institution. A person does not need to undergo surgery in order to be issued such a certificate. We have statistics from our Civil Registration Offices: from 2018 (this is when the mechanisms that implement relevant legal provisions came into force) to 2022, over 2,700 cases of sex change were registered in ID papers and about 190 marriages were concluded after a sex change. So, we see the following situation: a person had their sex changed in their passport, yet remained the same physiologically, and that person can contract a marriage and adopt children. There are other issues: at what age will such a person retire after having changed their sex on paper? What penitentiary do we send them to if they commit a crime? And so on. We are not dealing merely with conflicts of laws over sex change; we see non-compliance with the state’s concepts and constitutional priorities.

So, Russia’s Ministry of Justice will shortly start work on amending the law on civil registration. The federal law on “The framework for public healthcare in the Russian Federation” and several other legal regulations will also need to be amended accordingly. That will rule out changing sex in Russia by merely amending one’s identity papers.

Q. Konstantin Anatolyevich, there is another hot topic that becomes particularly heated on Fridays, when the register is updated, and that is the subject of foreign agents. Will there be further changes, will the screws be tightened or will there be a pull-back?

A. Last year, we updated our foreign agent legislation. Instead of a patchwork of rules, we now have a single law that I would, incidentally, call rather soft compared to its western counterparts.

In drafting our law, we took account of, among other things, international practices, including the universally known FARA or “Foreign Agent Registration Act” the US passed back in 1938.

To compare. Over 3,500 foreign agents are now registered under FARA and the number of registrations has gone up 30% since 2016. We have just over 400 active agents.

Under the US FARA, any organization or individual acting in the interests of foreign states, including media outlets, must register as such and submit detailed semi-annual reports on their activities to the government.

Additionally, US law uses the so-called ‘open’ concept of political activity allowing FARA to be applied to a broad range of people engaged in lobbying, offering information and consultation services, and distributing financial resources. Compare that to our law, which clearly lists the areas and forms of political activity.

I would also like to reiterate that FARA envisages penalties for violations of it, including a fine of up to USD 10,000 or a prison term of up to five years. There is also a clause envisioning a prison term of up to ten years for anyone who acts as a foreign state’s agent without first notifying the US Department of Justice. So, the US legislation rigidly regulates the activities of people acting as foreign agents.

Our law is moderate and balanced and, compared to the US law, envisages more lenient requirements for reporting, internal registration and liability for violating the foreign agent legislation.

Together with Duma deputies and senators, we regularly monitor current legal rules and take stock of threats, then improve our foreign agent legislation accordingly.

One of the discussions at the St. Petersburg Forum is slated to focus on protecting national interests while shaping and developing civil society.

Q. Recently, the World Wildlife Fund was declared a foreign agent. Various petitions were written claiming this decision to be an unfounded mistake. Could you comment on such claims?

A. To engage in a discussion at the moment and exchange opinions now would be unprofessional since the judgment is certainly legal and substantiated. The Ministry of Justice will present its arguments in court.

All the petitions signed on behalf of this once-respected organization are the fruit of the Fund’s active public relations campaign. For the last few years, the Fund has focused on precisely such self-advertising. There is much talk but little is actually accomplished. Where are the specific achievements, what has the Russian WWF done over the last few years? Virtually nothing! Yet, the Fund is very fond of saying how bad the environmental protection situation is in Russia in every respect. This approach is not surprising as they need to justify their requests for funding. And they are not alone in using the lack of transparency and their famous names for allegedly engaging in charity collections. Such actions will not go unnoticed: we are going to identify them and take the decisions mandated by Russia’s legislation.

Q. The notarial system and the advocates’ association are heading for major changes soon. These topics are certain to be discussed at the Forum. What are the main tasks in these areas?

A. Currently, the Ministry of Justice is developing appropriate concepts: that of developing the advocates’ association and legal services regulations and that of developing the notarial system.

In 2022, work continued on amending the federal law on ‘Advocates’ work and on the advocates’ association in the Russian Federation’. A week ago, the State Duma passed it at the first reading.

This draft law envisages creating a single state register of advocates in the Russian Federation to serve as the only official, up-to-date resource with reliable information about advocates.

Additionally, Russia’s Ministry of Justice will be vested with the power to approve the Procedure for taking the bar exam and evaluating the expertise of bar applicants. The draft law also introduces more stringent requirements on bar applicants’ education. Special attention must be focused on professional advocacy standards.

Today, we sometimes encounter absurd situations, such as when the Ministry of Justice being forced to file three motions to have a person who openly justifies terrorism disbarred. And news reports periodically mention lawyers attempting to smuggle prohibited substances into penitentiaries. Such things must not happen! Lawyers must be paragons of decency and have high moral standards. These are people supposed to protect our rights and defend the principles of justice. We are not attempting to breach the independent status of the advocates’ association, but we must put things in order!

Q. What about innovations in the notarial system?

A. The most important innovation here is revision of the approaches to determining notaries’ rates. On 1 October 2023, amendments to the Russian federal law on the notarial system are coming into effect. They entail charging fees at a single notarial rate that includes a federal component (a federal rate) and a regional component (a regional rate).

The federal component will equal stamp duty and take into account Russia’s legislation on taxes and levies. The regional component will be tied to a given region’s subsistence rate. A formula for calculating an economically feasible maximum regional fee will be developed by the Federal Notary Chamber and approved by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.

We need to be very careful when developing this formula in order to ensure an appropriate notarial rate that will take into account the given region’s subsistence rate and its socioeconomic features. Together with heads of regions, senators and deputies, we have agreed to monitor the quality of notarial services closely. We plan, should the need arise, to raise the issue of increasing the number of notaries where there is a shortage.

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