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Medvedev signs bill which facilitates registration of parties

The law envisages a 80-fold drop in the number of party members from 40,000 to 500

MOSCOW, April 3 (Itar-Tass) — Outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev has signed a bill into law on Tuesday which facilitates requirements for registering political parties. The president put his signature under the document during a meeting with representatives of initiative groups of the future parties which had not been registered yet.

The law envisages a 80-fold drop in the number of party members necessary to register a party, which dropped from 40,000, as had been required until now, to 500. Under the new law a party cannot be liquidated because of an insufficient number of party members in its regional departments.

A party should take part in the election of all levels for seven years in succession; otherwise, a party will be subject to liquidation within five years. Once in every three years a party is to submit a financial account of its revenues and expenditures to the Central Election Commission, whereas previously a party had to account to the Central Election Commission every year.

The new law prohibits parties from using party names which resemble the names of the already existing or no longer existing parties. The law also stipulates the norms of registering a party which earlier might have been denied both registration without explaining the reasons and the right to appeal.

A document certifying that a party was registered is to be issued no later than a month since the date when a party applies for registration. The law also stipulates cases in which a party's registration might be suspended for no more than three months a party might need to eliminate inaccuracies found by the Justice Ministry, which is obliged to declare the inaccuracies in a motivated conclusions and later resume a registration process.

The law comes into force since the date of publication. The document is one from of the presidential package of the reform of the Russian political system, in which President Medvedev first voiced the idea of facilitating the rules of party registration, delivering his State of the Nation Address on December 22, 2011.

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