THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION ADMITTED THE INDEXATION OF AMOUNTS TO BE COLLECTED

On July 22, the Constitutional Court of Russia ruled that Article 183 of the Arbitration Procedure Code of the Russian Federation was unconstitutional. The norm contains provisions on the indexation of previously collected amounts. According to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, part 1 of the article in question does not correspond with the Constitution of the Russian Federation and needs to be changed.

The reason for the detailed examination of the norm was the request of the Commercial Court of the Republic of Tatarstan and the complaint of citizen Storblevtsev. In the opinion of both applicants, the article in question contains legal uncertainty and gives the courts the right to reject the applicants’ claims for indexation.

Having considered the issue, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation came to a conclusion about the inconsistency of the norm with the basic law of the country and called on the courts to use the official consumer price index before the appropriate changes are made.

The position of the judges was that the realization of the right to a fair trial is possible only if there are mechanisms that enable the winning party to receive compensation for the adverse consequences of non-execution of the court order within a reasonable time. One of these adverse consequences is, among other things, the depreciation of previously collected amounts due to inflation.

At the same time, the existing edition of the article allows to reject the claims for indexations. This state of affairs, according to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, diminishes the right of a party to judicial protection, which is unacceptable.