Recommendations
Made by the First Inter-Regional Coordination Workshop on SEO registration and licensing of specific activities

11. The general principle should be that any act by a registration body modifying the contents of rights and obligations of the applicant should be made in writing. The document should, among other things, contain the data and the reasons behind the decision made.
        This recommendation has been developed on the basis of the existing law implementation practice. The federal legislation minimally regulates the procedure of state registration. In connection with this today it is quite problematic to prove a registration body guilty in the court litigation, should it violate the rules set forth by the law, for many of its activities are executed without the respective background paperwork. A good example is a demand by registration bodies for the documents not envisaged by law (in particular, the documents confirming the location of corporate management bodies specified in the constituent documents). It is hardly possible, however, to prove these facts in a court litigation.
        Should a registration body issue a document to the applicant on waiver of the registration or a demand to submit additional documents, necessary for the registration, these documents often contain only the resolution and no motives behind the decision taken.
        In the opinion of the experts, to solve the problem it could be possible to bind the officials of the registration body to make all their acts affecting the contents of rights and obligations of the applicant, in writing. This document should be amended with an explanation, which should have references to specific regulations as reasons for the decision taken. It should also indicate how the applicant violated the established registration procedure.
        It also seems necessary to bind the registration body itself with the collection of proofs should a claim be filed to the court against the actions (lack of same) of the officials of the registration body.
    
12. Any decision by the registration body negative for an applicant should be accepted only provided there are exhaustive reasons for that envisaged by the Law.
        The recommendation aims at possibly narrowing the options the registration body officials may have in respect of the decisions they take.
    
13. The Law should duly describe the procedures used by the registration body and all possible types of decisions it is allowed to take.
        The legislation on state registration in force defines only the list of documents necessary for state registration, and the time frame for registration. On this basis the registration bodies set forth the registration procedures on their own. In connection with this and to build up the uniform legal environment it seems necessary to set forth the uniform registration procedure on the entire territory of Russian Federation.
        In connection with this the Law should govern all the activities of a registration body and define all the types of decisions to be taken. It seems that these decisions could be confined to the following:
    - entry into the Register;
    - acceptance of documents;
    - suspension of the application;
    - demand for additional documents within certain time stipulated by the Law;
    - return of the application document on request of the applicant, should the application have been suspended;
    - waiver of entering the information into the Register;
    - cancellation of a record in the Register.
        When developing administrative procedures in the registration process the legislator is referred to the regulation experience of identical legal relationships in arbitration procedural law and legislation on competition.
    
14. The total time for the state registration prior to entering the information into the Register should not exceed 21 (twenty one) day from the moment of receipt of the respective application.
        Considering that the state registration procedure includes the subsequent registration with all the relevant public bodies carrying out control and statistic functions, as well as on the basis of EC member countries' experience, the experts defined the maximum time necessary for the state registration. This time frame makes 21 days from the receipt of the registration application. Should a registration body demand for additional documents necessary for the registration, the time specified above should be suspended.
    
15. All the disputes arisen in connection with keeping the Register should be solved in agreement with the rules of jurisdiction set forth by the procedural legislation. Outside of this Law, the solution of these disputes should be referred to the jurisdiction of arbitration courts.
        The procedural legislation in force defines the jurisdiction of the disputes arisen in the process of state registration depending on the category of the founders. In case the founder of the potential economic operator is a legal person, then the solution of the disputes mentioned above is referred to the jurisdiction of the arbitration courts, and should a citizen be the founder, then the disputes linked with registration are studied by general law courts. This resulted in a situation whereby the higher judicial stages of the general law courts' system as opposed to the system of arbitration courts often pursue contradictory policies when solving the disputes falling into a specific category. This strongly undermines the principle of legitimacy of court decisions. This is why on the basis of the legal nature of the disputes linked with both state registration and keeping the Uniform State Register, the solution of these disputes should be referred to the jurisdiction of the arbitration courts.
    
16. Provision for principles and implementation of fast and practical access to the information of the Register, in particular, within the framework of the federal structure of Russian Federation.
        It is recommended to use the respective modern information and telecommunication technologies as the means of the relevant information processing, storage and distribution. It seems feasible to use the experience of many countries already available on granting the access to the data of the State Register through the Internet.
    
17. The need to give distinct and transparent definitions in the Law to the notions of "location", "legal address", "postal address", "location of executive body" and "the place of registration" of a legal entity, together with their relation to each other.
        The law in force widely uses all the terms listed above, however, it gives no definition to their contents. In practice it often results in numerous interpretations of this or that term.
        Besides, the provision of Article 54 of the Civil Code needs its development. According to it, the location of a legal entity is defined as the location of its state registration. When interpreted literally, this provision results in a conclusion that the location is the territory of jurisdiction of the respective body. For example, if a legal entity is registered with the municipal registration chamber of Irkutsk, then the location of this legal entity will be Irkutsk City, respectively. The definition of the location of a legal entity plays an important role when deciding on opening its representations or branch offices. According to Article 55 of the Civil Code of Russian Federation, the creation of branch offices or representations is only possible outside of the location of the legal entity itself. This is why in this case the creation of branch offices and representation in Irkutsk for the company also registered in Irkutsk, is forbidden.

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