The Government approved a bill to amend the Law on Transparency in Decision-Making. Under it, all the authorities issuing normative decisions and administrative documents with a social, economic and environmental impact will be obliged to consult the public before submitting them for approval. This amendment extends the application sphere of the law. Thus, not only the acts adopted by Parliament, but also the documents issued by the central and local public authorities will go through the decisional transparency procedure, IPN reports.
The announcements of the authorities issuing decisions concerning the initiation of decision drafting must contain more contact data so as to enable those interested to state their opinions on them. The bill also specifies the methods by which the public authority ensures access to draft decisions and related materials.
A minimum term of ten days was set for public debates. Public consultations on a decision will be obligatorily held when this thing is requested by the interested sides. The sides will also be informed about the holding of public meetings and about the withdrawal of a draft decision.
A separate chapter deals with the monitoring of transparency ensuring in decision-making and the punishment for not obeying the legislation on decisional transparency.
In the Government’s meeting, head of the National Participation Council Sergiu Ostaf said many draft decisions are included in the Cabinet’s agenda without discussing them with the public first. In 2013, half of the bills and decisions approved by the Government hadn’t been discussed with the general public and the interested sides. The appraisals of bills put forward by MPs are also approved without holding public consultations.
