Notes transmitted by the Parliaments represented in the  Working Group

 FINLAND

 Remarks on the Cogne preparatory note

The Finnish Parliament continues to consider the issue of Quality of legislation important. The issues defined in the Lisbon document are also - broadly - relevant.
Some doubt remains whether there is sufficient agreement among the participating parliaments about what these issues actually mean in concrete terms. For instance the statement that "lawmaking has become highly differentiated, specialised and fragmented" expresses worry about developments that, in other local and political contexts, may be highly desirable, e.g., devolution, subsidiarity and de-regulation. It is also possible that the undisputed values of transparency, co-ordination, comprehensiveness, accountability and effectiveness mean different things in different European countries, as has been illustrated by the genuine misunderstandings surrounding the EU's proposed regulation on public access to documents.

The Finnish Parliament has long addressed the issue of quality in legislation; our concrete actions will be explained in the note on the legislative process in our country. In the Finnish experience, Parliament is most effective as a political actor, rather than as an administrator or research body. Improvements in the quality of legislation have been brought about by demanding high standards of the executive, concerning legislative programming and impact evaluation, as well as actual legal drafting. In parliamentary democracies, the executive is both accountable to the parliament, and specifically mandated to carry out the wishes of a majority in parliament. This is why, after all, most legislation is enacted on the basis of government bills; these, in turn, are the result of the parliament's political intention in setting up the government. Thus, while we agree that parliaments must and do provide the comprehensive view of society, this does not necessarily imply any need to change current political practices.
The same principle of the executive's accountability to parliament applies also to European legislation. It is for the European Parliament to set and uphold standards for the European Commission, the body with a monopoly on drafting European law. Similarly the Union's principal legislator, the Council, consists of national ministers, who are each accountable to their national parliaments. Several national parliaments have demonstrated that ministers can be held accountable for - and be influenced before - Council meetings. If the Council persists in approving legislation that falls short of nationally accepted quality norms, national parliaments should address this issue. Joint action by European parliaments should thus involve agreeing on the standards to be demanded.

The Finnish parliament agrees that Quality of legislation should be made a mainstream political issue. We believe that quality of legislation is inseparable from such recognised goals as transparency and accountability. We also agree that there is a need for national parliaments to agree on and promote standards of legislative quality specifically for European legislation. We strongly endorse the involvement of the OECD and other institutions that have worked on this issue.
Of the specific proposals in the Cogne preparatory document, we give priority to identifying common methods to organize specific information areas within the web sites of individual parliaments. This is something that can be achieved using existing resources. The task can also be defined with reasonable precision. We hesitate to support setting up any permanent system to exchange information. Such systems have been attempted over the years - indeed several still exist - and have uniformly been disappointing. The problem seems to be that any abstract information system must necessarily collect all information, while demand for information is limited to a small number of specific issues that cannot be identified abstractly. The investment is bound to be disproportionate to the benefits. Also, using primary information from national parliaments necessarily raises the question of translations and further costs.
Inter-institutional co-operation needs to be enhanced. As stated above, we believe parliaments' proper role is to set and uphold standards for legislative drafting, but executives will continue to be the main producers of legislative texts. We would propose, as a concrete step, that a conference is convened that would join together parliaments, executives and scholars to identify and implement best practices.
Concerning the quality of parliamentary debates and procedures and the quality of information available to parliaments, we believe that these should be permanent issues of discussion and concern. Indeed the records of past Conferences of Speakers indicate that much useful information has been exchanged on these issues. Whether these issues should be addressed in a memorandum or protocol would depend on the level of consensus. It is doubtful that agreement can be found on common standards for debates, procedures and information, or that such standards would have any real meaning. The wisest course would be to recognise that the quest for 'best practices' is an on-going process, of which Conferences such as ours are an important part.