The meeting, held via videoconference, was attended by Special Presidential Representativefor Environmental Protection, Ecology and Transport Sergei Ivanov, the chairmen of the State Council commissions – Governor of the Nizhny Novgorod Region Gleb Nikitin and Head of the Republic of Buryatia Alexei Tsydenov, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Transport and Construction Yevgeny Moskvichev, and representatives of relevant federal and regional executive bodies, the chambers of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, sector-specific associations of entrepreneurs, and scientific and expert organisations.
Opening the meeting, Igor Levitin reminded the meeting participants that following the State Council Presidium meeting in 2016, the President repeatedly gave additional instructions to relevant bodies on various issues and noted the need to upgrade the mechanisms regulating the functioning of foreign trade participants in the roadstead transhipment of cargo. Mr Levitin recalled that the President emphasised the importance of the problem primarily for environmental protection.
The participants reviewed a draft federal law on amendments to the Merchant Shipping Code and other laws of the Russian Federation (on regulating the transfer of cargo from one vessel to another outside seaports). They discussed, in particular, a number of issues related to the transhipment of cargo outside seaports in internal waters and territorial seas, the exclusive economic zone, and in the internal and territorial waters of the Russian Federation in the Caspian Sea.