European integration expertise of draft bills

14 December 2022
European integration expertise of draft bills
Home > Monitoring > European integration expertise of draft bills

Draft bill # 8242 of November 28, 2022

Cosponsors: Ruslan Stefanchuk (the Chair of the Verkhovna Rada), Oleksandr Kornienko (First Deputy Chair of the Verkhovna Rada), and Olena Kondratiuk (Deputy Chair of the Verkhovna Rada).

Who is affected: MPs, the Cabinet, and Ukrainian citizens.

Summary of the bill:

  • the procedure for checking the compliance of draft bills with Ukraine’s European integration obligations to the EU will be introduced:
      • all submitted bills will undergo the European integration expertise by the Cabinet committee for European integration. The timeline for consideration of draft bills by MPs will be extended from 30 to 45 days
      • when the results of the expertise are ready, the Cabinet will submit its report to the committee for European integration. If a draft bill is amended before the second reading, it will be sent to the Cabinet once more for the second review
      • it will be required for all draft bills concerning European integration to be considered in the second reading. It will be required to get a report with the results of the Cabinet’s expertise of a draft bill before this bill is to be put to the floor
  • to submit a European integration bill, it will be required to also provide an article-by-article table of compliance of the bill with the EU legislation and a Cabinet-certified translation of the particular piece of the EU legislation being adapted to the national law
  • it will be allowed to put draft bills designated by the Cabinet as European integration bills on the parliamentary agenda as urgent
  • it will be required to include a member of the committee for European integration in a parliamentary discussion of such draft bills to provide the evaluation of the bills’ compliance with the obligations to the EU
  • the Chair of the Verkhovna Rada will be granted the power to issue ordinances on issues of organization of the work of the Parliament, MPs, and officials. Also, the Chair will approve the template of the table of the bills’ compliance with the EU legislation
  • it will be prohibited for MPs to submit more than one resolution (from all MPs) to annul the results of the vote.

What is right: the introduction of a mechanism checking draft bills’ compliance with the EU legislation. Draft bills violating the obligations to the EU will have fewer chances to be adopted by the Parliament.

What is wrong:

  • the draft bill will be applied not only to the European integration bills but to all legislative initiatives. The requirement for all bills to be examined by the Cabinet will de facto paralyze the work of the Parliament. The number of draft bills submitted to the Parliament is enormous, so it will take a lot of time to properly analyze them. As a result, even a simple draft bill amending only several articles, for example, will be stuck in a queue for analysis for months
  • the bill limits the MPs’ right to initiate legislation and decreases the role of the opposition. Ban on the submission of multiple resolutions to annul the results of the vote will have no practical consequences for the work of the Verkhovna Rada but it will limit the ability of the opposition to influence the work of the Parliament
  • the unwarranted expansion of the authority of the Chair of the Verkhovna Rada. The Chair of the Verkhovna Rada is equal to any other MP and thus should not have any extraordinary powers that other MPs do not have.

Alternative solution: to require expertise on the compliance of a bill with the obligations to the EU only if the bill directly addresses issues related to these obligations. This way, the lawmaking process will not be disrupted and the Cabinet’s work will not be blocked.