OREANDA-NEWS. December 13, 2012. Vladimir Putin took part in a meeting of the Council of Legislators dedicated to addressing key priorities, including those identified in the Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly.

The Council of Legislators is an advisory and consultative body made up of representatives of both houses of the Federal Assembly and heads of regional legislatures.

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PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR PUTIN: Good afternoon, colleagues,

This is an expanded meeting attended by the speakers of both houses of the Federal Assembly, their deputies, committee heads and the leaders of regional legislative assemblies.

I think that our meeting is very timely, and not only because the Address to the Federal Assembly was presented yesterday, where we once again remembered the challenges facing the country and the key issues that require solutions. We should review the progress made so far and what still needs to be done to make our efforts more effective.

We should talk again about the priorities of our joint work. As you know, great many issues and challenges facing the country are most severe at the regional level. In order to make our joint efforts more successful, we must set up very effective communication channels for close cooperation between federal and regional authorities. Our goal is to ensure that every level of government is self-sufficient and able to tackle the challenges facing it independently.

We are all aware of the challenges: these are problems that people face every year and every day. When I say every year, I mean the kind of problems that have been accumulating for decades, such as housing, relocating people from unfit housing, providing basic services, including pre-schools, healthcare, education, and so on.

This is a very large set of problems and tasks that you face continuously. People expect you to resolve many of these problems and they count on you to raise these issues with the federal Government. I propose that we have an open and lively discussion on all of these matters today and try to determine the directions of our cooperation that would help us increase its effectiveness.