How effective is the format of one meeting of the Verkhovna Rada, which has already lasted more than two years?
The Verkhovna Rada has been working for more than two years in one plenary session, the duration of which is now more than 336 hours.
Of course, during this time the deputies took many breaks, and also managed to repeatedly discuss the constitutionality of this format of work. A separate issue is the grounds for declaring breaks in the meeting. Sometimes they are predictable, such as the situation when all the issues on the agenda have been considered.
More often than not, the reasons for interruptions in meetings of the Verkhovna Rada during this period were unexpected and even accidental. In particular, during several meetings, the basis for declaring a break, according to the chairman, was “lack of potential,” and several more times the activities of the Rada were “destroyed by an air raid warning.”
However, sometimes deputies find the strength and motivation to work without breaks for 12-13 hours straight. At one of these meetings, people's deputies even asked for a short break so that "responsible people's deputies present in the hall could satisfy their natural needs."
What is an “ongoing plenary session” and does this format help people’s deputies work effectively, read the material of the “Honestly” Movement.
Multi-year meeting
At about 10 pm on February 23, 2022, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Ruslan Stefanchuk declared the extraordinary meeting of parliament closed. And already in the morning a new meeting began, during which the deputies, with an almost constitutional majority of votes, supported the chairman’s proposal not to close it, but to continue it. At the same time, the deputies gave the presiding officer the right to determine the time, place and method of voting later during the meeting. This vote was the only one taken on the first day of the full-scale invasion, other than the vote to declare martial law.
Since then, deputies have gathered to work in the session hall 104 times, and each time the chairman announced a break in the meeting at the end of consideration of issues. From the beginning of 2022 to April 2024, people's deputies worked more than 336 hours in the session hall of the Verkhovna Rada.
This format of work is now enshrined in a separate parliamentary resolution. It also defines the rules for forming a draft agenda for the day after a break in the ongoing meeting and the length of time for consideration of issues.
The resolution also stipulates that those present at a continuing meeting on the day after the break should not disseminate information about its beginning, progress and decisions taken earlier than an hour after the adjournment was announced. However, as we know, not all people's deputies comply with these requirements.
Legislation & reality
According to the same resolution, the details of the parliamentary meeting before the adjournment must be determined by the conciliation council, which sets the time required to consider the issues on the agenda. However, if the air raid alarm lasts more than three hours, the meeting is adjourned without consideration of scheduled issues or exhaustion of time. However, in practice, as we see from the transcripts, the list of grounds for declaring a break in an ongoing meeting is much wider.
Sometimes a break is announced at such a meeting, when deputies manage to consider all the issues on the agenda, even if they could not be adopted. Thus, during one of these meetings, the last item on the agenda received only 223 votes. After which the presiding officer emphasized that he “tried.”
Sometimes the meeting ends even if it was not possible to consider all the initiatives, but the planned time has been exhausted. In such cases, consideration of agenda items may be postponed, because there is no calendar plan for meetings. The public has to wait for consideration of this or that decision indefinitely, until deputies announce on their social networks that they will return to the session hall for a meeting after a break.
The “potential” of people’s deputies or the lack thereof also often becomes the basis for declaring a break in the meeting. This usually happens if there are not enough deputies in the hall to make decisions. Such breaks can be announced if there are less than ten deputies in the hall or even if more than two hundred people’s deputies are present. Under both conditions, parliament will not be able to make a single decision.
At the same time, if parliament considers amendments to bills, which often takes dozens of hours, the chairman is in no hurry to announce a break. Thus, when discussing amendments to the law on mobilization (No. 10449), although the parliament worked until the night, in fact only about three dozen people’s deputies worked in the session hall. A similar picture in the session hall is very often observed when considering the so-called correction spam.
Most often, consideration of amendments takes place in an almost empty session hall. This is probably due to the fact that people's deputies do not consider their consideration important and deliberately ignore such meetings. Therefore, people’s deputies do not insist on consideration of all planned amendments, because there is no chance of their adoption.
Meeting during air raid raids
Over the past few months, cases of interruption of Verkhovna Rada meetings due to air raid warnings have become more frequent. The decree regulating the rules for holding them during martial law stipulates that deputies must return to the session hall within 15 minutes from the moment the alarm is cleared. But sometimes it is not possible to continue working that day.
Not all deputies return to the hall, and as a result, it is no longer possible to vote on decisions. To avoid failure in important votes, the presiding officer assesses the number of people's deputies present and may decide to call a break.
Given this practice, sometimes the chairman, after the start of the air raid, without waiting for its completion, announces a break in the meeting. He immediately notes that the deputies will no longer be able to gather after the end of the alarm, so work stops at this stage. Under such conditions, even issues planned for consideration have to be postponed.
An ongoing meeting does have advantages in terms of the speed of gathering deputies to consider issues in the session hall if necessary, but at the same time it makes clear planning impossible, creates grounds for postponing decisions and is an excellent format for justifying closed work.
What's the prospect?
Since the beginning of this year, certain changes have been taking place in the Verkhovna Rada in the format of work, which have been repeatedly called for by both representatives of the public and the people’s deputies themselves. Thus, recently a draft resolution was registered in the Rada, in which people’s deputies demand to end the regime of one plenary session and return to the format of classic plenary sessions with two plenary weeks, a conciliation council and an hour of questions to the government, which are determined by the regulations. However, the opinions of people's deputies on this matter differ.
First Deputy Chairman of Parliament Alexander Kornienko in the comment “Honestly” notes that this format, created on the day the full-scale invasion began, is very flexible and allows you to gather at any time. But the calendar plan does not provide such opportunities, although the legislation provides tools for convening extraordinary meetings: “The format of an ongoing meeting is not the whim of the head of parliament. This is determined by a resolution that was supported by deputies several times. While we are under martial law, work will continue in this format. And yet, anyone who follows the work of parliament knows that the number of meetings and working hours is similar to the time of 2020-2021. Now the schedule of meetings is returning to previous levels, and the last meetings generally took place for three days in a row, and on the fourth we had an hour of questions for the government. This is full compliance with the work format that we had before the full-scale invasion.”
The position of the leadership of the parliament is shared by other people's deputies. In particular, the chairman of the Committee on Freedom of Speech, Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, notes that the continuity of the meeting makes it possible to quickly, within 24 hours, gather deputies in the session hall. At the beginning of a full-scale invasion, this format of work was critically needed to quickly convene deputies to resolve urgent issues that could not be planned in advance.
“Now, with the strengthening of security in Kyiv and air defense, the need for short meetings has disappeared and a return to the work schedule is quite realistic. The last meeting has already taken place in this format and showed that this is a fairly balanced and adequate decision. As far as I understand, in May there will be an experiment to return to the traditional working format. After this, we will probably return to the calendar mode of operation, but with the ability to quickly gather for meetings,” notes Yurchyshyn.
Let us remind you that the “Honestly” movement analyzed all meetings of the Verkhovna Rada from the beginning of 2022 until now, and also calculated how long people’s deputies worked in the session hall of the Rada. As an analysis of parliamentary meetings and working hours shows, people's deputies are gradually increasing the number and duration of meetings.
Under such conditions, it is possible to return to the work schedule of the Verkhovna Rada, as well as restore the access of journalists to the walls of parliament and broadcasts of meetings. Such working conditions will definitely affect the discipline of people’s deputies, because we will be talking about the reputation of each of them.
