Lawyers: the new Constitution will help Crimea get integrated into the legal field of the Russian Federation

The new Constitution of Crimea entered into force last Saturday.

The new Constitution of Crimea entered into force last Saturday. It is basically drawn up like the majority of similar laws of the other units of the Russian Federation, which will enable the republic to get integrated into the legal field of Russia without any problems, say the lawyers questioned by RIA Novosti.

The State Council (parliament) of Crimea unanimously approved the Constitution of the republic last Friday. According to the document, Crimea “is a democratic constitutional state within the Russian Federation”. The Constitution specifically mentions that the territory of the republic is single and indivisible, and is an unalienable part of the territory of the Russian Federation.

Less autonomy

Advocate Evgeny Zhilin, Managing Partner of the Law Firm "YUST", pointed out that the text of the Constitution has been mainly composed from borrowings from the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the republics that integrate Russia, and certain provisions (for example, those governing the citizens’ rights, liberties and duties) are practically identical to those of the Constitution of Russia.

The agency’s interlocutor said: “The Constitution of Crimea is less federative than, for example, that of Tatarstan. But the degree of federativeness will be determined not so much by the text of the Constitution of Crimea, which is quite common for any republic within the Russian Federation, but also by whether the agreement of delimitation of authority and competence will be executed between Crimea and the Federation and by its contents”. The lawyer believes that, in any case, the status of the republic will be less autonomous than before, when the republic was a part of Ukraine.

See the full version at the "RIA Novosti" website.