Foreword
Sixteen years ago, in the very center of dirty, cold and hungry Moscow, in the then most luxurious five-star hotel "Balchug", the first (and last) international conference "From independent professions to civil society" was held. Actually, even in the name there was some amendment to the Soviet mentality, tk. Freiberufler is translated not as independent but as "free profession". And, in order not to confuse the fragile minds of Soviet people, the Germans (mostly) told for two days that in Germany they call free professions not because their carriers are not required to go to service from 9:00 to 18:00, but because that they (doctors, lawyers, teachers, artists, architects, engineers, etc.) with a total number of about a million people in Germany - independently, i.e. freely from the state determine the volume, quality and cost of their highly qualified services to society. These professions do not fall under the definition of "entrepreneurship", because their representatives earn their living by personal labor and only thanks to their high professional qualities, while having the right to hire assistants.
The state, by its laws, transfers all these rights to civilian professions through self-regulatory organizations or, more precisely, a society of free professions. The liberal professions institute originated from guild organizations and is the backbone of civil society. For two days, to the great bewilderment of the Germans, the audience was extremely distrustful of these truths, if not openly hostile. Only at the final session of the conference did one of the regional officials (and there were a majority of them in the hall) without unnecessary diplomacy uttered: “Everything we have been told here is nonsense! What is good for a German is death for a Russian! The only thing that modern Russia needs is Enlightened Officials!"
And the audience, having finally heard the long-awaited, understandable words, burst into thunderous applause. Truth appeared in its unsightly, naked form - the only free profession in Russia is the profession of an official. Only he, free from the state, has the right to independently determine the volume, quality and cost of his services for managing us on behalf of the state. And our official will never allow other free professions to exist in Russia.
Chapter 1. Theory of "Self-regulation" in Russian
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the idea of self-regulatory organizations, overcoming the hostility of officials at all levels, arose and grew stronger within the walls of the bastion of the Radical Market Reforms of Russia (abbreviated as RRRR) - the Ministry of Economic Development, in order to appear to the world in the form of Law No. 315 - FZ. It is noteworthy that in the first editions of this law there were no SROs of subjects of professional activity at all. the term "self-regulation" itself came from the world experience of liberating the entrepreneurial activity of financial institutions (banks, stock exchanges, stock markets) from state control. The ideologists of the RRRR did not know about liberal professions and do not know to this day, because we are building a market, and in the market the main goal is entrepreneurship, and the main goal of the latter is profit. This "ideological" consideration was the reason for the veto of V. V. Putin in 2000 on the law "On creative activity and creative unions", which (oh, God!) Proclaimed that creative activity is not entrepreneurship. They want to evade taxes by inflating their native state - apparently, they decided in the presidential administration. According to the deep conviction of the ideologists of the RRRR, all specialists in Russia study (at least 16 years), undergo many years of internship and improve their professionalism all their lives solely in order to deceive everyone.
This is probably why the RRRRoshniks themselves prefer to be treated, teach their children and live in Germany, which is mortally dangerous for the fine Russian soul, where the implementation of the profession of a doctor, teacher and architect is not entrepreneurship. Nevertheless, it was difficult to agree with the need to create SROs for subjects of professional activity, since there are professions serving business (notaries, lawyers, auditors, appraisers, brokers, etc.). SROs of professionals still fell into the law, but through the prefixes "and" ("or") and with all the restrictions and instruments of property liability applied to financial institutions. Hence the compensation fund, unknown in the societies of the free professions, which looks like a common fund. Hence the prohibition for all SROs to carry out activities that are the subject of self-regulation (even in SROs of designers or writers). Hence, absurd for many societies of liberal professions "independent members of collegial governing bodies" (in SRO cardiac surgeons or pilots).
In general, the "party RRRR" wrote for itself some kind of law, in which there was simply no place for the societies of the free professions. And the construction business did not fail to take advantage of this, ending at the same time with all the excessive, in his opinion, liberties of 315 - FZ and in general ending with SROs of subjects of professional activity in the Town Planning Code. According to the remarkable Soviet tradition, professions that are considered free in world practice have turned into entrepreneurial activities serving the construction business. For this, the profession “designer”, which does not exist in the world, was even invented (instead of “architect” and “civil engineer”). 315 - the Federal Law was completely rewritten and the chapter on self-regulation in the City Code (26 pages, 23 articles) became almost larger in volume than the basic text of the law.
Under the pretext of “insolvency”, and, consequently, irresponsibility of an individual - a specialist on the one hand, and the gangster nature of the insurance business in Russia - on the other, a system of self-regulation of business entities that has no analogues in the world was created - “persons preparing project documentation.
Such self-regulation is fundamentally incompatible with the systems accepted in world practice and recorded in the WTO rules as "services in the field of architecture." Our architects cannot work in the West at all, because they do not exist as subjects of law.
As a result, his own painfully familiar domestic bicycle with wooden square wheels was invented - after all, what is useful for a German is useful for a Russian … And where did he go? Straight to a dead end.
Chapter 2. Practice of self-regulation in Russian
Despite the exoticism of Russian legislation and the outbreak of the economic crisis, the emergence of the SRO caused an extraordinary stir. Former bosses and heads of liquidated licensing bodies, directors of state corporations and large institutions, adventurers and rogues of all sorts and calibers rushed to create various SROs based on the membership of "persons exercising …" The motivations of such a diverse contingent were very different: someone considered SRO as a return to power, someone saw in them a “alternate airfield”, someone - an opportunity to implement their “national idea” - to move to Moscow, and someone a profitable commerce in the field of “non-commercial” activities. The only thing that no one saw in the SRO was the foundations of civil society, although the PPRReshny rhetoric about the liberation of business from the yoke of bureaucrats was used very widely.
Despite the extraordinary activity of the Malosereoshniks, their first attack smashed into smithereens on the rock of the state body supervising self-regulatory organizations in the field of construction. The SRO is a dark, muddy business and requires particularly strict control, the government decided and appointed one of the most closed departments, almost a security agency for supervision, to supervisors of construction SROs - Rostekhnadzor.
It seems that this decision took Rostekhnadzor itself by surprise. They knew how to control nuclear power plants and the production of weapons, but no one in this department knew how to "self-regulate" the motley freemen of construction, survey and, almost free designers.
And therefore they decided to apply the tried and tested method - not to let go, under the pretext of the absence of "teaching aids". True, there is no reception against scrap, and the SRO registration certificate number 1 was received (according to rumors, by a special order of the Prime Minister) by the SRO from the military special forces. But the rest of the civilian riffraff was detained for several months, which they devoted to rewriting the statutory documents and providing additional information on the remarks of Rostekhnadzor. As a result, eight months after the statutory deadline for registering an SRO, only 9 organizations out of more than 160 currently existing ones received the right to be called this dissonant abbreviation. Some poor fellows submitted documents four to five times, monthly calling a general meeting of all members to rearrange commas in the documents.
Once again, the civil society was shown its place … in the SRO. This circumstance did not dampen the desire to immediately announce the race for the main prize of the Sereoshniks - the seat of the president or, at worst, the vice-president of the National Association.
The cunning slingshots of the legislators in the form of two-thirds of the registered SROs required for a quorum at the All-Russian SRO Congress were no less cleverly circumvented. Nine organizations formed the National Association of Designers (NAD) almost a year before the statutory fundraising deadline.
Why was such a rush to call a congress representing 5.6% of all future members? Why establish an NDB without a plan and program of action, a budget (but with the structure of the apparatus and governing bodies). Weird question. To elect themselves, loved ones, to the presidency and vice-presidency. Oh yes, civil society! Well done!
The only publicly useful justification for the extraordinary haste was the need for urgent participation in the creation of a new legislative and regulatory framework for design, the right to which was proclaimed in the law.
It became clear very soon how this right was used in practice. Representatives of state corporations immediately set about what they considered the main goal of SROs - to destroy small competitors in the face of another support of civil society - small business, since there was no need to destroy liberal professions, since they simply do not exist in Russia.
Within five months, the Government issued the so-called 48th Resolution and 624th Order, which dealt a crushing blow to small businesses, since it is easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than for a small enterprise to fulfill all the conditions necessary to obtain the right to design complex objects, the list of which has been greatly expanded.
This episode exposed one of the most important contradictions inherent in self-regulation of business entities - their programmatic inequality.
If the difference between individuals - specialists is not so big (different weights, but one head, two hands), then the difference between a giant state corporation with thousands of employees and a small workshop of three people, which forms the basis of the design business in the West, is a thousandfold. And this difference is not only quantitative, but also qualitative, since not in terms of representation in SROs and NOPs, nor in terms of lobbying opportunities, small enterprises will never be equal with large state structures. In addition, although they are "equal" in terms of contributions to the common fund, this contribution, divided into two thousand people or three people, weighs on a small workshop 600 times more than on Mosproyekt.
SRO of business entities is a game in which small business will always be the loser.
Another disease of such SROs was also discovered at their birth. The level of corruption in the new system is no less than in the system of state licensing of legal entities. And even more, because the announcements of the sale of admissions to the SRO are no less than the sale of licenses, and the price is not less.
At the same time, the world experience of registration, licensing, certification of specialists (architects and civil engineers) did not reveal anything of the kind. The eight-year experience of licensing architectural activities in Russia and the system of professional self-regulation of a number of other professions carried out under Russian law (notaries, lawyers, appraisers, arbitration managers, etc.) have shown almost complete corruption purity.
And finally, the third lesson in the practice of self-regulation. Having employed several hundred people under the conditions of the crisis, SROs at the same time began to literally drown themselves in the paper flow, which increased significantly. The number of required rules, standards, regulations on bodies, conclusions of commissions has increased so much that no supervisory and control bodies, the number of which is simply off scale, can no longer understand them.
Particularly shocking is the requirement to regulate the number of performers according to: eleven sections and thirteen types of work, four categories of objects and three types of contracts with the employer under conditions of different length of service (from two to fifteen years), diplomas of various specialties, etc., etc. …
Mercy, nowhere in the world are these issues regulated in the SRO. This is generally a matter of certified architects and engineers, and only them. As a result of the collective efforts of hundreds of SROs, a monstrous bureaucratic self-regulating machine has been created that crushed all sorts of sprouts of civil society.
Conclusion
Well, what can you do? Again a fork, a roadside stone and the inscription "You will go to the right …". Three ways again.
The first realistic one is to develop, deepen, improve our wooden bicycle. Well, for example, by transferring the organization of certification of GUIs and GAPs to the NOP, and he transfers it to the close universities. True, certification and academic education have nothing in common, but some of the vice-presidents of NOP and deans of universities, accredited to conduct attestation of GUIs and GAPs, will have the opportunity to dramatically improve the quality of their treatment, education and life in … Germany.
For everyone else, nothing will change, apart from the need to purchase a qualification certificate for GUIs and GAPs.
The second is pragmatic. In parallel with the SRO of entrepreneurs, create SROs (chambers) of architects and civil engineers. Probably, the quality of services of specialists in architectural and construction design will slightly increase, but the load on businesses, especially small ones, will increase, because you have to pay contributions already in two SROs, plus a compensation fund and insurance. Not to mention the increasing taxes.
Well, we have run over small workshops at the same time, well, we will not have a civil society. But there were no them twenty years ago and nothing, they lived, they did not grieve. But what a joy for big business!
The third is fantastic. Create chambers of architects and engineers under the law on … There will be one law or two, this is a matter of tactics. The main thing is that they have at least some generic features of the liberal professions.
But the question arises, why then a huge colossus of SRO entrepreneurs? Well, there are none in Germany and in Ukraine. Or maybe it can be liquidated like licensing? At the same time, design is freed from unnecessary waste of money and from the new bureaucracy and from inequality in the market. “It’s a pity to live in this beautiful world…”.
