Legislating August 2006

Negative outcomes:

1. The number of permanent parliamentary commissions, respectively costs, have increased;
2. Some of the bills which go into parliament are not publicly available;
3. Some of the bills are not accompanied by the required bylaw justification;
4. Bill justifications where available are not based on a cost-benefit analysis principle at all;
5. There is neither an institution nor practice to conduct a regulatory impact assessment in the pre-adoption phase of the legislation process;
6. The “State Gazette” is still not available on Internet; it is in fact possible to buy an electronic copy, but at the prohibitive price of 6,010 lv. (about EUR 3,000) / year.

Positive outcomes:

In general there is nothing to be lined up here with just a single exception: not long ago the Council of Ministers expressed its willingness to introduce a better regulation principle in terms of conducting regulatory impact assessment on a regular basis; however, this has not yet happened.