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Two Years of Operation of the Verkhovna Rada of 8Th Convocation: Legislative Capacity and Law-Making Process

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Two Years of Operation of the Verkhovna Rada of 8Th Convocation: Legislative Capacity and Law-Making Process TWO YEARS OF OPERATION OF THE VERKHOVNA RADA OF 8TH CONVOCATION: LEGISLATIVE CAPACITY AND LAW-MAKING PROCESS SUMMARY Judging by two-year law-making efficiency and legislative capacity indices, the Verkhovna Rada of 8th convocation looks somewhat better than the 7th convocation Rada, but is inferior to the parliaments of earlier convocations. The efficiency coefficient of the current parliament (the share of adopted draft laws in the total number of registered drafts) is just 11%. In terms of specific holders of the right to legislative initiative, the President’s efficiency (81%) is much higher than that of the MPs (7%) or the Government (29%). The law-making efficiency coefficient of every single faction is similarly low, ranging from the lowest figure of 3.6% (the Opposition Bloc) to the highest of 13.8% (the Radical Party). During the two-year period, the individual law- making efficiency of 99 MPs was at zero level: they initiated dozens of drafts none of which became a law. On the whole, female MPs displayed a somewhat higher law-making efficiency compared to male MPs: 11% and 7%, respectively. Deputies elected on the basis of political party lists were twice as efficient as those elected in majority districts: 10% vs. 5%. The main reason for the low level of the parliament’s law-making efficiency of the parliament consists in the excessively high number of draft laws registered by the People’s Deputies. During the first two years of operation of the 8th convocation Verkhovna Rada, the MPs registered twice as many draft laws compared to their colleagues who had been working in the faraway parliament of 3rd convocation. In view of the fact that the number of draft laws initiated by parliamentarians has been steadily growing while the number of laws adopted by the Verkhovna Rada is relatively stable, 8 out of 9 draft laws registered by MPs in the parliament are unlikely to become laws. In spite of low law-making efficiency indices, the MPs are no less responsible than the Government or the President for developing current policies and updating the legal framework. Of the 516 laws that were enacted by the 8th convocation Verkhovna Rada and are currently in force, 51% were drafted by MPs, 34% by the Government and 15% by the President. The disintegration of the parliamentary coalition brought about a reformatting of the Government and changes in the rhetoric of the coalition factions, but without changing the behavior of these factions during the voting. There was no essential impact on the voting similarity indices of the ex-coalition factions. Of the 516 laws currently in force, twenty-one (in particular the Laws “On the Accounting Chamber” and “On the Judiciary and the Status of Judges”) were adopted without the mandatory opinion from the Main Office for Research and Evaluation. Lack of appropriate evaluation of draft laws and an avalanche-like increase in the number of legislative initiatives have caused an extra workload on the parliamentary committees and significantly reduced the quality of the law-making process. Low law-making efficiency of the parliament Only 11% of the draft laws registered during the two-year period at the Verkhovna Rada of 8th convocation have become laws. The low level of law-making efficiency is an institutional problem for Ukrainian parliamentarism which is characteristic of all Verkhovna Rada convocations. Remarkably, a negative trend has been observed as regards the Verkhovna Rada’s law-making efficiency coefficient, which has been declining or showing no tangible progress. During the first two years of its operation, the Verkhovna Rada of 8th convocation was most similar in terms of law-making efficiency to the parliaments of 7th convocation (2012-2014) and of 4th convocation (2002 – 2006), which had operated during the most acute political crises in Ukraine’s independence period. By contrast, the Verkhovna Rada of 3rd convocation had the highest-ever efficiency index: its MPs voted in support of 29% of the total number of registered draft laws. The President and the Government are more efficient lawmakers than the MPs Eighty-one percent of the draft laws initiated by the President during the two years of operation of the Verkhovna Rada eventually became laws. Nearly a third (29%) of the draft laws submitted to the parliament by the Government were approved by voting. By contrast, only 7% (one out of every fifteen) of the draft laws registered by MPs succeeded in taking effect. That kind of situation is characteristic of all convocations of the parliament. The MPs’ law-making efficiency coefficient has been decreasing gradually – from the maximum of 16% achieved by the 3rd convocation Verkhovna Rada to 6–7% displayed by the last two convocation of the parliament. The Government’ law- making efficiency coefficient has gone up somewhat compared to the index of the previous convocation of the Verkhovna Rada: from 25% to 29%. However, it is lower than the indices achieved by the earlier convocations of the Ukrainian parliament. By contrast, the President has been showing an upward trend and a much higher level of law-making efficiency (81%) compared to the previous convocations. The likely 3 reason behind that disproportion is that the President and the Government have been using their right to legislative initiative in a much more pragmatic and responsible way, focusing their efforts on initiating and promoting a limited number of priority draft laws. There are no essential differences in law-making efficiency figures between the different factions. The coefficient is similarly low, ranging from 3.6% (the Opposition Bloc) to 13.8% (the Radical Party). On the whole, as was to be expected, the lowest law-making efficiency indices are those of factions not belonging to the pro-Government coalition, while the indices of the five factions that used to be members of the coalition “European Ukraine” are somewhat higher. 5 The law-making efficiency of a quarter of the MPs is at a zero level Only ten MPs have an individual law-making coefficient that exceeds 30%. In this respect, the leaders are Bohdan Onufryk (the Petro Poroshenko Bloc) with an efficiency of 57%, Viktoria Siumar (the People’s Front) with 42%, and Hlib Zahoriy (the Petro Poroshenko Bloc) with 38%. At the same time, 99 MPs have displayed a law-making efficiency of zero level during the two years, in spite of having initiated a considerable number of draft laws. Here, the anti-leaders are primarily members of the Opposition Bloc faction. Thus, Natalia Korolevska was involved in developing 97 draft laws none of which was adopted. Yuriy Solod had 79 such draft laws; Dmytro Shpenov, 69; and Oleksandr Vilkul, 58. The non-affiliated MP Evheniy Muraev initiated 90 draft laws none of which took effect. MPs register more draft laws than they can consider An absolute majority of draft laws in the Verkhovna Rada of different convocations was initiated by the People’s Deputies; this results in low law-making efficiency indices of the factions, the individual MPs, and the parliament as a whole. During the first two years of work, the MPs of the Verkhovna Rada of 8th convocation registered twice as many drafts compared to their colleagues who had been working in the faraway parliament of 3rd convocation. The share of drafts initiated by the Government or by the President is minimal and has been gradually decreasing, compared to the previous convocations. In this respect, the Ukrainian parliament differs from the parliaments of the European Union countries, where most legislative acts are usually initiated by the Government. 7 Within the existing legal framework, the number of laws that the parliament can adopt is limited and relatively stable. In principle, one can speak of the parliament’s throughput capacity: the number of laws that the parliament can produce within a specified time interval. Thus, during the first two years of operation of the Verkhovna Rada of different convocations, this parameter never exceeded 557 laws (in the Verkhovna Rada of 3rd convocation) and never went down below 171 laws. However, as the MPs register an ever higher number of draft laws, they do not take these limits into account. Nor do they care about the consequences: the additional workload on the committees, the Rada Secretariat and the factions – on account of the need to process an ever increasing number of draft laws within the same time interval. The MPs physically have no time to review all the drafts of legislative acts that they initiate in the parliament, not to mention the possibility for an in-depth analysis of these acts or for their improvement. If these dynamics persist, eight out of every nine draft laws registered by the MPs in the parliament will have no chance to become laws. At the same time, there are MPs who do not participate at all in the drafting of laws. Thus, the non-affiliated MP Serhiy Kliuev did not initiate a single draft. During that period, only one draft law was initiated by the non-affiliated MPs Kostiantyn Zhevaho and Pavlo Baloha as well as by Denys Omelianovych and Dmytro Dobkin from the Opposition Bloc faction. Where does the law-making responsibility for the current policies lie? By analyzing the identity of the authors of the laws which were adopted by the parliament in the past two years and which established new “rules of play” within the existing legal framework, one can determine the shares of responsibility for the current policies among the different holders of the right to legislative initiative. Of the total number of laws adopted by the parliament of 8th convocation (516 documents), 51% belong to the MPs, 34% were initiated by the Government and 15% by the President.
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