Adherence to good lawmaking principles is linked to the rule of law. To ensure the production of good legislation, provisions of the Constitution, the Rules of Procedure of the Parliament and Law No. 4622/2019 regulate individual issues relating to the legislative process and set certain rules to be followed when drafting, filing and voting on a bill or an amendment.
How, when, in what form and with what content ministerial amendments are submitted, discussed and voted on is regulated by Article 74 par. 5 of the Constitution and Articles 87, 88 and 101(5) of the Rules of Procedure of the Parliament.
In this context it is stipulated, inter alia, that amendments:
a) must be related to the main subject matter of the bill or the proposed law and if they are irrelevant to that subject matter they are not introduced for debate and
b) are debated only if they have been submitted at least three days before the beginning of the debate in the Plenary or in the relevant standing committee (see more on issues of good lawmaking in general as well as issues of tabling and voting on amendments in 1,2,3,4,5,6).
On 08/02/2023 the Ministry of Justice submitted to Parliament a bill entitled “Principle of equal treatment regardless of disability or chronic illness, updating the terminology of the Civil Code, the Code of Civil Procedure, the Criminal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Code of Administrative Procedure, the Code of Notaries and Law No. 4478/2017, for its harmonization with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities ratified by Law No. 4074/2012 and other provisions to facilitate access to justice for persons with disabilities”. An amendment was subsequently tabled to the bill, after the deadline for amendments had passed, and containing provisions that were not directly related to the main subject matter that the bill pertained to.
The amendment was submitted just the night before the bill was to be voted on, at 22:10 on 15/02/2023 by the Minister of State and consisted of 1 articles regulating the issue of covering the expenses of members of the National Accessibility Authority; a matter unconnected to the main subject matter of the bill.
On 16/02/2023 the bill was discussed in the Plenary Session of the Parliament and law 5023/2023 was passed, entitled “Principle of equal treatment regardless of disability or chronic illness, updating the terminology of the Civil Code, the Code of Civil Procedure, the Criminal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Code of Administrative Procedure, the Code of Notaries and Law No. 4478/2017, for its harmonization with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities ratified by Law No. 4074/2012 and other provisions to facilitate access to justice for persons with disabilities”, which contains as Article 26 the provision of the above-mentioned amendment, despite the fact that the amendment with which the said provision was introduced for voting was both submitted late and was irrelevant in topic, contrary to the rules of good lawmaking.
Under the rule of law, the government and the Parliament must produce laws by applying the Constitution, the Rules of Procedure of the Parliament and the other rules that have been established to guarantee and promote good and transparent lawmaking practices.
In Greece, however, the violation of the rules of good lawmaking seems to be a long-standing, systematic problem, such as in this case of the passage of Law No. 5023/2023, in the context of which provisions contained in an overdue and irrelevant amendment were tabled and passed.
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