Civic Legislative Forum position on the practice of public consultation

On 3 July, the Civic Legislative Forum published a position paper in which it strongly opposes the increasingly frequent government practice of unjustifiably omitting mandatory public consultations for government draft laws.

This requirement stems directly from the Council of Ministers’ Rules of Procedure and its purpose is not only to make lawmaking transparent, but above all to take into account the voice of the public, which is the addressee of legislation. As experts have pointed out, the problem is not only the omission of the consultations themselves, but also the setting of extremely short time limits for the submission of comments, thereby depriving the majority of citizens and social organisations of the opportunity to express an opinion on a draft. And although the proposed changes to the Sejm's rules of procedure increase the transparency of the legislative process at the parliamentary stage, experts believe that the government is making less and less use of the instruments already in place, which explains the need to publish the position paper.

The Civic Legislative Forum has been active at the Stefan Batory Foundation since 2009. It focuses on organising and opening up the legislative process to entities from outside the public administration sector. The Forum also reacts to errors that occur during the legislative process and that may have a negative impact on, inter alia, public consultations.

Tomasz Zalasiński, Counsel in the Regulatory Affairs, Legislation and Compliance Practice, is a member of the Civic Legislative Forum. Tomasz specialises in regulatory advice on constitutional and administrative law, and Marcin Matczak, Partner in the Life Sciences Practice and professor at the Chair of Philosophy of Law and State Studies at the University of Warsaw, sits on the Batory Foundation’s Board. 

The full text of the Civic Legislative Forum’s position paper is available on the Batory Foundation’s website.