Over 140 representatives of Federal and Regional Business Ombudsmen Offices, executive and legislative bodies, business associations and lawyers associations of the Yaroslavl region participated in two back to back regional workshops held in Yaroslavl on 28-29 September 2017. The participants had an opportunity to discuss the issues relating to: impact of inspections on business processes at municipal level; and typologies of corruption affecting the business sector at the regional and municipal levels of the Russian Federation.
Opening speeches were delivered by Deputy Prime Minister of the Yaroslavl region, two Deputy Chairmen of the Duma of the Yaroslavl region, Director of the Office of the Directorate General of Programmes of the Council of Europe, Head of the Secretariat of the Federal Ombudsman for the Protection of the Rights of Entrepreneurs of the Russian Federation, and Head of the Council of Europe Programme Office in the Russian Federation.
The participants took active part and readily contributed to the discussion of the main findings and recommendations of the relevant draft studies prepared by Council of Europe international and national experts with the input of the respective Expert Working Groups consisting of representatives of beneficiary institutions.
The feedback provided by the participants, including concrete cases, will be used to finalise the relevant studies and to better tailor to the country context specific recommendations to address gaps identified in the legislation or institutional practices at the municipal level in line with applicable international standards and good practice. The participants particularly welcomed and underlined the timeliness of recommendations related to fighting corruption affecting entrepreneurs during inspections in view of the ongoing wide-scale reform process in this field.
The workshops were extensively reported in the local media, quoting amongst others the Director of the Office of the Directorate General of Programmes of the Council of Europe, and outlining the findings of the technical papers developed by Council of Europe experts.
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