Note trasmesse dai Parlamenti rappresentati nel Gruppo di lavoro
ITALY
Camera dei Deputati
Innovation in parliamentary procedures in Italy
Note for the
Working Group on the quality of legislation
Introduction
I. Procedures for the quality of legislation
Box 1: Pre-Legislative Parliamentary Evaluation and Regulatory Impact Analysis
(RIA)
Box 2: Committee on Legislation
II. Special procedures for cross-sectoral issues
Box 3: Economic and Financial Planning Document (DPEF)
Box 4: Regulatory reorganisation
III. Relations with the European Union
Box 5: The Annual European Community Bill
Box 6: Parliamentary consideration of the EU working agenda and analysis of
consistency with EU legislation
Box 7: The EPTA annual conference
IV. Relations with research institutes
Box 8: Research on development in southern Italy
V. New procedures for inter-institutional relationships
Box 9: Inter-institutional conferences
Box 10: Seminar on competitiveness
INTRODUCTION
On the occasion of the Cogne meeting of 1st April, the Working Group on the quality of legislation accepted the proposal of the President of the Chamber of Deputies, Luciano Violante, to conduct a fact-finding exercise on issues related to the quality of legislation by means of notes drafted by the individual countries.
The note on the Italian situation is divided into five thematic sections whose contents were defined over the course of the Working Group's activities. Each section has been divided into one or more boxes that illustrate the experiences selected as examples of good practices to be reported to the other European parliaments.
I. Procedures for the quality of legislation
One procedure that is explicitly aimed at improving the quality of legislation
is pre-legislative consultation and evaluation, which is conducted by the
parliamentary committees. In this the stage, the data provided by the Government
are subjected to parliamentary review with the aim of assessing aspects such as:
the need for legislative intervention, any possible conflict between the latter
and the sphere of autonomy of other regulatory bodies, and the cost of measures
to citizens (box 1).
In order to help perform this evaluation, a specialised ad hoc body has been
established in the Chamber of Deputies: the Committee on Legislation, which is a
bipartisan body that focuses on the quality of legislative texts (box 2).
Box 1: Pre-Legislative Parliamentary Evaluation and Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA)
The renewed attention to pre-legislative evaluation was signalled
in the Circulars issued by the Presidents of the Senate and the Chamber in
January 1997. The contents of the Circulars have been almost entirely
incorporated into the new text of Article 79 of the Chamber Rules of Procedure,
which entered into force on 1 January 1998. They establish that that the
pre-legislative evaluation carried out by the committees must take the following
aspects into account: a) the effective need to intervene with legislation; b)
consistency with the Constitution, with EU legislation and the areas of
responsibility assigned to local authorities; c) definition of objectives,
financial coverage, burden on the government, citizens and businesses; d)
clarity of the text.
The model of pre-legislative evaluation outlined in the Rules of Procedure of
the Chamber of Deputies envisages a relationship based on co-operation with
Government, which is called upon to provide data and information in a variety of
formats, including ad hoc technical reports, much in line with existing
procedures for analysing the financial impact of bills. Minority groups within
the Committee have also been empowered to request additional information.
As to the Government, circulars are issued by the Prime Minister's office (Presidency
of the Council of Ministers). In particular, pursuant to Law 50/1999, the
Government must carry out (for the time being on a trial basis) regulatory
impact studies on the organisation of public agencies and on the activities of
citizens and businesses in relation to the draft regulations that it wishes to
adopt. Parliamentary committees may ask the Government to submit reports on the
regulatory impact analysis so that they can carry out preliminary scrutiny and
consultation. Furthermore, Government is called upon to carry out research into
the drafting, implementation and publicising of laws at the request of the
relevant parliamentary bodies.
Box 2: Committee on Legislation
The Committee on Legislation, established
within the Chamber of Deputies on 1 January 1998, is composed of 10 Deputies, 5
from the majority and 5 from the opposition. All the Committee members serve as
chairperson for a period of six months. The Committee on Legislation is charged
with making proposals and exercising control; it gives advice to the standing
committees and develops law-making methods. It expresses an opinion on decree
laws, on bills containing delegation or de-regulation provisions and, at the
request of at least one fifth of the Committee members, on other bills. It also
provides outlines of the regulatory provisions handed down by Government.
Thus, the Committee on Legislation provides horizontal support for the
pre-legislative consultation and evaluation process carried out in the
parliamentary sectoral committees, thereby enhancing interest in the quality of
the legislative texts produced and ensuring that they can be properly integrated
into the legal system. It also contributes to reorganising and simplifying the
existing body of legislation.
Every six months the Committee draws up a report on the main problems
encountered and the relevant measures adopted and organises an
inter-institutional conference (see box 9).
II. Special procedures for cross-sectoral issues
In recent years legislators have established parliamentary procedures aimed at
outlining general policies and at defining and updating the Government's
programme on cross-sectoral issues. These procedures have been used by
Parliament and Government to carry out important reforms in the economic and
administrative sectors.
Major examples of this sort of special procedure include:
the procedure for the Economic and Financial Planning Document (DPEF) (box 3);
-
- the procedure used to draft the outline of the reorganisation of existing
legislation (box 4).
Box 3: The Economic and Financial Planning Document (DPEF)
The parliamentary procedure for considering the Economic and Financial Planning
Document (DPEF) has been used as a model in setting up other planning and
intersectoral procedures, since all parliamentary committees are involved in
shaping its general objectives under the guidance of the Budget Committee. In
addition, it is an opportunity for the Chamber to express itself through a
policy-setting act.
The DPEF, submitted each year by the Government at the end of June, is the main
general policy instrument, in which financial constraints are integrated with
the development targets for the real economy and society. It provides a summary
of the Government's sectoral policies as well as a set of guidelines for
parliamentary activities involving economic and financial matters.
The document is used by the Government to analyse trends in the economy and the
public finances and to set out the goals to be pursued for the following year,
offering a preview of the package of legislative measures required to accomplish
these goals. Through the resolution approving the DPEF, Parliament commits
itself to these goals and agrees to act in accordance with them in the course of
its legislative activity. At the same time, it requires the Government to act
consistently with a global view of the main policies to be pursued in the
following year.The DPEF is a streamlined and flexible tool for placing
Government's action within a framework of consistency and constraints, for
prioritising its actions and presenting them for consideration by the opposition,
and for providing the public with a precise view of the strategic ideas that are
being implemented or, conversely, are lacking.
Box 4: Regulatory reorganisation
Law 50/1999 marked the start of initiatives to reorganise existing legislation,
which were to be carried out by incorporating many important sectors into
consolidated codes.
On the occasion of the presentation of the Government report on the regulatory
reorganisation programme to Parliament, the Chamber adopted a procedure aimed at
defining relevant guidelines for the Government. The standing committees were
asked to express their opinion on their specific sector to an ad hoc committee.
This committee drafted a general report on the reorganisation programme, on
which the House based a resolution containing the relevant guidelines.
The implementation of the program by the Government will be monitored by the
standing committees for each specific area of responsibility.
III. Relations with the European Union
During the 1990s Italy significantly improved its record in transposing EU
directives (from 76.5% in December 1991 to 96.1% in November 1999). This was
mainly due to the introduction, at the end of the 1980s, of a specific procedure
to implement the obligations arising in relation to Italy's membership in the
European Union, based on the so-called Annual European Community Act (box 5).
Over the last few years increasing awareness that the quality and timeliness of
the implementation of EU legislation are closely linked to greater participation
by Italian institutions in the preparatory stages of EU decisions have led to
the adoption of new parliamentary procedures aimed at improving knowledge of
European legislation in its development stage and greater consistency between
national and EU legislation (box 6).
These new procedures are flanked by specific initiatives on the part of the EU
parliaments aimed at enhancing the use of new technologies by parliamentary
institutions (box 7).
Box 5: The Annual European Community Act
In the late 1980s a specific procedure was introduced for the transposition of
European legislation. It envisages the presentation each year of a bill (the
so-called Community Bill or Act) to Parliament by Government, and in particular
by the Minister for Community Policies, whereby national legislation is
periodically amended to make it consistent with European law.
The Community Bill adopts a number of instruments to achieve these objectives,
including enabling legislation and authorising the Government to issue
regulations. The outlines of Government decrees are usually modified by
Parliament through the opinions expressed by the standing committees and the
bodies specialised in Community issues.
Box 6: Parliamentary consideration of the EU working agenda and analysis of
consistency with EU legislation
The traditional examination of the Government's report on Italy's participation
in the European Union was accompanied for the first time by a report on the
working agenda of the European Commission for the year 2000 (following
procedures similar to those established for the examination of the DPEF).
With special regard to ensuring consistency with EU legislation, the
pre-legislative parliamentary consultation and evaluation expressly takes this
into account as an essential aspect of the quality of the laws that are in the
process of being approved. To this end, the offices of the Chamber draw up an
analysis (used in particular by the XIV Committee on EU Policies) expressing a
specific position on the issue.
Box 7: The EPTA annual conference
The EPTA* annual conference in Rome in December 1999 served as an opportunity
for the Italian Chamber of Deputies' Committee on the Assessment of
Technological Choices (VAST) to experiment with a new format for this type of
event.
The experiment was based on the following elements:
· the conference took place in a new high-tech hall. Each participant was
seated at a computerised desk;
· the Conference website within the EPTA site could be accessed from the
computerised desks;
· the texts of Conference presentations were available on the site;
· the site also provided a "hypertext dossier" on the themes of the
Conference;
· interactive management of the dossier with real-time insertion of material
presented during the Conference.
The experiment was aimed at evaluating:
· the technical difficulties of setting up a database which could be used during the conference to generate hypertext documents;
· the impact on a parliamentary meeting of the available equipment and information, focusing on the way participant reacted to the stress of receiving
a wide variety of information inputs at the same time (speakers' presentations, hypertext and the possibility of surfing the web).
* L'EPTA (European Parliamentary Technology Assessment) is the European network
uniting all parliamentary organisations involved in assessing the impact of
technology.
IV. Relations with research institutions
Regular contacts with individual researchers and national or international
research institutions on specific issues are one of the traditional operational
tools of the Chamber's support structures, notably the Research Department,
which prepares dossiers on all the measures considered by the committees and the
assembly.
More extensive or complex studies are conducted for certain especially important
issues, involving independent research institutes and the research departments
of other public institutions. The study on development in southern Italy is a
prime example of such collaboration (box 8).
Box 8: Research on development in southern Italy.
One approach that has proved especially effective has been the organisation of
studies on issues of major public interest on the basis of input from
parliamentary committees. The administrative bodies of the Chamber, and the
Research Department in particular, work together with the offices of the
committee chairpersons to identify external research institutes that are capable
of contributing high-level expertise on the issues involved. These research
institutes collaborate in conducting the necessary studies. The final product is
a document that is submitted to the committee for debate or study within the
context of seminars open to politicians and experts alike.
One major study conducted in 1999 with this method focused on the outlook for
development in southern Italy. It was coordinated by Giuliano Amato (before he
assumed a role in Government).A similar project is being prepared in the field
of international relations. It involves the establishment of a partnership
between the Research Department and a "consortium" of Italy's leading
research institutes in the sector.
V. New procedures for inter-institutional relationships
The special initiatives taken by the Chamber of Deputies include those regarding
inter-institutional issues, especially that on the quality of legislation.
Some of these have primarily involved public institutions with legislative or
regulatory responsibilities: this is the case of the Inter-institutional
Conferences promoted by the Chamber's Committee on Legislation (box 9).
By contrast, other initiatives have sought to open a dialogue on general issues
and the proper functioning of Parliament. They have involved a variety of
interest groups and associations. One notable example was the involvement of the
representatives of entrepreneurs on a seminar on Italy's competitiveness (box
10).
Box 9: Inter-institutional Conferences
In order to call attention to the problems of legislation, the Committee on Legislation (see box 2) has promoted semi-annual inter-institutional conferences on regulatory simplification. These have brought together other bodies in addition to Parliament (the Government, regions, local authorities, the judiciary, independent authorities, research centres, non-governmental associations, consumer associations).The first Conference involved all the bodies responsible for the drafting, execution and interpretation of legislation, with the goal of identifying joint strategies for overcoming the operational difficulties of the legislative system.The second Conference brought together a number of bodies from the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, as well as representatives of organisations from the services sector and consumer associations.The key issues of the Conferences were:· the interactive relationship between Parliament and the Government;· parliamentary procedures for new parliamentary functions;· relationships between parliaments and other regulatory authorities at the international and sub-national levels, with a view to countering the phenomena of technocratic devolution and fragmentation in policy-making;· the creation of two-way information channels between Parliament and other bodies involved in drafting legislation, as well as the "users" affected by the norms.The next Conference, scheduled for the 30 June 2000, will seek to establish a dialogue between the national and regional parliaments on the theme of legislative methods in a quasi-federal state.
Box 10: Seminar on competitiveness.
Another initiative was the seminar on Italy's competitiveness. The topic of competitiveness was chosen because it allows Parliament to interpret sectoral policy from a global and transversal perspective.The seminar was organised by the Conference of the chairpersons of the standing committees following the submission of a report on the issue by Confindustria, the country's leading entrepreneurs association.The seminar was moderated by the President of the Chamber. In addition to the top representatives of Confindustria, the seminar was attended by the chairpersons and members of the committees involved. The debate focused on the problems of the legislative process raised by the question of the competitiveness of the economy as a whole.
