Five thousand amendments, an almost empty hall and a night in the Rada: how the budget-2027 was approved in the first reading

After an overnight session that lasted until 3:05, the Verkhovna Rada in the morning of 28 October approved in the first reading the draft state budget for 2027 year.

MPs submitted a record 5236 number of amendments to the government’s draft budget-2027 totaling 13,5 trillion hryvnias. Key demands included revising the subsistence minimum, increasing pensions (under the draft budget for next year, they plan to raise them by only 183 hryvnias), cutting salaries for officials and members of supervisory boards, reducing funding for the telethon and road repairs, and directing all saved money to military salaries.

In the end, the Verkhovna Rada Budget Committee proposed to take into account only 90 proposals. In particular, the committee instructed the government to work out, before the second reading, an increase in monetary provision for servicemen and an expansion of state guarantees for defense enterprises. It also recommended banning the use of budget funds for the national cashback program.

However, as the parliamentarians themselves admit, the key amendment on raising military pay is only an instruction to the Cabinet. In practice that does not mean a specific percentage increase or specific sums will be fixed in the law by the second reading.

What MPs voted for and when to expect the adoption of the country's main financial document for next year — in the LB.ua report.

Record amendments, hours-long committee meetings

At the Rada session on 27 October, the chair of the Verkhovna Rada Budget Committee Roksolana Pidlasa (Servant of the People), presenting the conclusions on the draft budget for 2027 year, said that MPs had submitted 5236 amendments to the government text. “This is a record for the last 24 years,” she said addressing the deputies.

Chair of the Verkhovna Rada Budget Committee Roksolana Pidlasa during her speech

Earlier Pidlasa emphasized that more than two-thirds of the amendments are “legislative spam.” According to her, deputies used artificial intelligence to prepare them, which can generate about two thousand amendments in three minutes, and the committee secretariat then had to process them.

We wrote earlier about the draft budget that the government submitted to the Rada.

By a preliminary estimate, taking into account the submitted amendments would require an additional 13,5 trillion hryvnias in total. “That’s almost two budgets for next year,” Pidlasa stressed.

She drew attention to the fact that, as always, many proposals do not meet the requirements of the rules because they are not balanced, or their proposed funding sources are not supported by calculations and are unrealistic.

“As a result of the working group and budget committee meetings we proposed to take into account 90 proposals across all areas: from defense, social policy, health care to local budgets,” she said.

In the area of defense, the committee instructed the government to work out several “extremely important issues” before the second reading of the budget.

“These are an increase in monetary provision for servicemen and an increase in the volume of state guarantees for enterprises of the defense-industrial complex,” Pidlasa specified.

MPs, she said, propose doubling the volume of these guarantees — to 60 billion hryvnias.

“We also instruct the government to work out increasing spending on construction and purchase of housing for servicemen,” Pidlasa added.

In the health care sphere, the committee instructed the government to provide additional funds for procuring medicines for patients with rare diseases, including achondroplasia, autoimmune diseases of the nervous system and neuromuscular diseases.

“This is additional funds to 21 billion hryvnias for medicines already included in the draft state budget,” the committee chair explained.

Speaking from the podium, Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko added that the government supports the Verkhovna Rada resolution with conclusions and proposals on the state budget-2027.

“We were at the budget committee for more than 9 hours. The discussion was active. Priorities are clear, the proposals of the people's deputies are clear,” Marchenko said.

At the same time he noted that the budget must be balanced, so the government is working with international partners to finance it. The minister called this the key task today.

“Despite all our desire to live better, we must understand at whose expense we will live better… This is our key task, because we cannot allow a situation in which we adopt a budget that we then cannot implement,” he emphasized.

Finally the Rada with 232 votes adopted the conclusions and proposals to the budget as a basis and moved on to consider deputies’ amendments to adopt the draft in the first reading. After that the government must prepare the document for the second reading. The vote on the budget in full is planned for 23–26 November.

An overnight session in an almost empty hall

After deputies moved to consider the amendments, most parliamentarians left the plenary hall. The head of the Batkivshchyna faction Yulia Tymoshenko, who replaced some of her amendments (there were more than 200) with a speech from the podium, called such consideration a “sham” and a “disgrace.”

Former speaker and nonpartisan MP Dmytro Razumkov likewise replaced consideration and voting on amendments with continuous speeches. Several times he suggested to Pidlasa to conduct an “experiment” and try to live next month on the proposed subsistence minimum (for able-bodied people — 3691 hryvnias per month, this year — 3328 hryvnias). After hours of responses from the podium, Pidlasa reacted to this restrainedly, stressing the state’s limited resources. Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk asked Razumkov not to get personal. In response Razumkov proposed supporting his amendment to raise the subsistence minimum to at least eight thousand hryvnias per month. However no amendment gained 226 votes, because by evening no more than two dozen opposition deputies remained in the hall.

MP Dmytro Razumkov

The chair of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Social Policy and the Protection of Veterans' Rights Halyna Tretiakova (Servant of the People) also replaced consideration of her amendments with a speech. It lasted as long as 78 minutes and turned into a detailed lecture on social policy and threats, including revolution, from the widening gap between the very wealthy and poor citizens in Ukraine.

At 22:30, after 11 hours of budget consideration, MPs finally reached the amendments that foresee cutting expenditures and redirecting those funds to military salaries.

“The good news — we vote on each amendment almost unanimously in the whole hall. The bad news — there are only up to 20 deputies in the hall. For example, this vote on canceling funding for the marathon. This amendment proposes to take 1,6 billion from the “United News” telethon and send that money to our single army. Because, unlike this propaganda, they are the ones who truly defend us from Russian IPSO and the Russian invasion… The marathon must disappear as a phenomenon, and this amendment provides for that. But this amendment was supported by only 12 colleagues,” wrote MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak (Holos).

Yaroslav Zheleznyak

At 3:05 MPs finished consideration of rejected amendments to the budget-2027. Interestingly, the last time the practice of “all-night” sessions during the budget review was used was before the full-scale invasion — from 22 to 23 November 2018, when the final vote took place at 6:01. Later Servant of the People boasted that they had moved away from night sessions thanks to the mono-majority and lack of disputes.

At night Stefanchuk announced a recess in the plenary session. And in the morning, by decision of the Conciliation Council, two committee-rejected amendments — No. 611 and No. 1003 — were to be put forward for final voting first.

Chair of the Rada Ruslan Stefanchuk

Amendment No. 611 (authors — Danylo Hetmantsev from Servant of the People and about 30 other deputies) proposed to change the rules of plea bargain proceeds in criminal proceedings via the budget law. It concerned that money under plea agreements would go only to the state budget or to a special fund for monetary provision of servicemen.

Amendment No. 1003 (authors — Hetmantsev, Tretiakova, Chair Stefanchuk and others, in total 10 deputies) provided for setting a “ceiling” on salaries in government bodies and budget institutions — 80 thousand hryvnias per month. Such a limit would apply to MPs, judges, Constitutional Court judges, members of the High Council of Justice and the High Qualification Commission of Judges, prosecutors and National Bank employees.

What the government was instructed to do. It wasn’t without embarrassment

Already on 28 October at 10:00 the Rada moved to the final stage of considering the draft budget in the first reading.

However both agreed amendments — on the salary “ceiling” for officials at 80 thousand hryvnias and on directing plea bargain proceeds only to the state budget — did not receive the required number of votes. MP Iryna Herashchenko (European Solidarity) was outraged and demanded returning to the amendment on limiting officials’ salaries. In response Stefanchuk emphasized that the amendment “has just failed, you should have voted.”

Then Pidlasa asked the hall to vote on the committee-recommended amendments. The speaker only called out their numbers without explanations. Ivan Krulko (Batkivshchyna) complained and asked to at least read “one sentence” about the essence of the amendments, because most deputies, he said, do not understand what they are voting for. In the end deputies approved part of the committee’s amendments.

According to Zheleznyak, the key amendment concerned military salaries, which had not effectively been indexed with inflation. Together with co-authors — deputies from Servant of the People and the opposition — he had proposed already at the committee stage to stipulate directly in the state budget law for next year a salary increase of 20%. A logistics/support soldier, according to his calculations, would receive 36 thousand hryvnias instead of 30 thousand. The 200 billion needed for this, the authors proposed to find through redistribution within the budget, in particular by cutting spending on the telethon, roads and strategic communications. Ultimately the budget committee unanimously supported this amendment (No. 1279). At the same time, Zheleznyak said, the percentage increase was removed from it at the insistence of the government.

In the plenary hall a constitutional majority — 304 MPs from all factions and groups — voted for this key amendment. However there was an awkward moment. During the presentation of the amendment a visibly tired Zheleznyak, due to the overnight session, misspoke and suggested raising MPs' salaries, for which he apologized. But the deputies themselves met this slip with loud applause and laughter. And Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk suggested to Zheleznyak: “Let’s do it again! TikTok won’t understand… But it’s an interesting idea.”

Importantly, the amendment itself is more in the form of an instruction to the government, since servicemen’s salaries should be established by a separate Cabinet resolution. The Rada’s ability to influence the process, as Zheleznyak explained, is very limited. Therefore in practice the government can ignore the parliament’s position or formally promise to review salaries but actually do nothing.

Already in the working groups that ended on 16 October, deputies, according to Zheleznyak, also defended the creation of a Business Insurance Fund against war risks and post-strike support, as well as funding for the fund without raising VAT. The government must provide expenditures for the fund and find sources to cover them.

The committee also proposed banning the allocation of money to the “National cashback” from the budget program supporting production and entrepreneurship. That program foresees 9,4 billion hryvnias, and these funds, Pidlasa explained, “should go to real business support.” In the hall 284 MPs voted for this amendment.

In the end 239 MPs voted for the draft budget in the first reading.

Prime Minister Serhiy Koretsky assured that “all recommendations provided by the committee will be carefully worked out during preparation for the second reading.” So in two weeks the government must return the revised budget text to parliament for final adoption.