REPORTS
Unjustified shortening of the public consultation period by the Ministry of Environment and Energy – February 2023
Articles 57 et seq. of law 4622/2019 contain provisions on the legislative procedure and the principles of good lawmaking. According to Article 61 of the above law, public consultation is to be carried out on legislative bills through the website www.opengov.gr and should last for two (2) weeks.
The consultation period may be shortened by up to one (1) week or extended for one (1) more week, for sufficiently documented reasons, which shall be stated in the regulatory impact analysis accompanying the regulation. As the Handbook of Legislative Methodology states, public consultation “is not just a necessary formal procedure, but an essential stage of the legislative process” which serves the principles of good lawmaking, including democratic legitimacy and transparency (see pp. 13-14). At the same time, any shortening of the consultation period should take place “only in absolutely exceptional cases and for sufficiently documented reasons” (see p. 68).
At 07:30 on 24 February 2023, the Ministry of Environment and Energy posted a bill entitled “Provisions for renewable energy sources and the protection of the natural environment” on the opengov website, putting it to public consultation. It was specified that the consultation will be completed at 10:00 on 28 February 2023, i.e. four (4) days later, which is less than the legal minimum of one week set by Article 61 of Law No. 4622/2019.
Furthermore, no reference was made as to the reasons for this shortened consultation period in the regulatory impact analysis accompanying the bill during the consultation period. The report on the public consultation has also not been posted on the opengov.gr website.
Page 58 of the regulatory impact analysis accompanying the bill when it was introduced for enactment (see Law 5037/2023) referred to comments received during the consultation period that related to extending the consultation period and explained that this was not feasible given that these energy-related issues required immediate passage, and that sections of the bill affected the timely transposition of EU Directives. Therefore, any possibility of intervention was judged to be extremely limited. This however, cannot necessarily be regarded as a ‘sufficiently well-founded reason’ or as an ‘absolutely exceptional case’ capable of justifying this extreme shortening of the public consultation period beyond the legally permissible minimum of 7 days.
Good lawmaking is a constitutional objective linked to the rule of law.
Articles 57 et seq. of Law 4622/2019 include rules related to the legislative process and good lawmaking, which are also detailed in the Manual of Legislative Methodology. These establish that bills should be subject to a public consultation period of 2 weeks, which may be shortened to one week only in absolutely exceptional cases, and for sufficiently documented reasons.
In this particular case, however, the Ministry of Environment and Energy submitted a bill for public consultation for a period of only four days, without giving substantiated reasons for the shortening of the consultation period.
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