How to legislate, not

The prime minister recently announced that a scientific committee has been put together to design a “national strategy for preventing and managing juvenile violence and delinquency.” “Well done,” we say. The incidents and statistics are indeed alarming, and the state has an obligation to examine the problem and to come up with a strategy for dealing with it.

The study will be carried out. The scientists on the committee are experts on the issue, as their colleagues on other committees for an array of other issues have been. What happens after is the question. Will the conclusions reached by the committee be used to actually draw up a strategy or will their report simply embellish the government’s libraries, which are stuffed with (admittedly wonderful) studies in every possible field?

We ask because a whole bunch of professors and experts were brought together back in 2020 to design a “Manual of Legislative Procedure.” It was published by the presidency of the government, as part of its efforts to design what it touted as an “executive state.” The last part of the manual was dedicated to a “decalogue of good legislative practices” so comprehensive that any democrat would hail it with a “hallelujah!” It proved, unfortunately, to be nothing more than a wish list serving public relations purposes. 

Let’s not go into the eighth commandment: “No irrelevant or overdue amendments shall be introduced in Parliament. Under no circumstances shall amendments that are not relevant to the subject of the draft law be permitted, nor shall amendments, even relevant ones, be tabled after the end of the debate in the relevant parliamentary committee.” Or the third one: “For a draft law to be submitted it must first be approved by all the ministries involved.”

The manual also states that any legislative committee should hear from the heads of the corresponding public administration departments and from other other interested agencies, whose opinions are considered crucial in elaborating the content of the law’s provisions. That went out the window too.

When it came to amending the Penal Code – for the seventh time since 2019, as the president of the Union of Judges and Prosecutors, Margarita Stenioti, noted – not only were the relevant officials not called to present their views to the legislative committee, but there was no legislative committee.

“There will be no legislative committee allowing lawyers to draft laws to the benefit of their clients at the Justice Ministry,” Justice Minister Giorgos Floridis stated in December. “We have seen lawyers from big law firms serving as members of legislative committees,” he added.

We don’t question the sincerity of the minister’s outburst, but cutting off one’s head for a broken tooth is not the answer. Have we run out of law professors who do not have a private practice and could have advised on the (seventh!) revision of the Criminal Code? We have ministers who are big-firm lawyers, after all. Why stick at legislative committees? At the end of the day, these committees do not pass laws; they advise on them. It is ministers – some of whom are big-firm lawyers – who sign the draft laws after studying and amending them, and Parliament, which is stuffed to the rafters with lawyers, that ratifies them. 

Unfortunately, the much-touted “executive state” evolved into an even more centralized apparatus and, therefore, a more inefficient one – as is always the case.

As for the “Manual of Legislative Procedure,” it should be filed under “Lessons unlearned.”