According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, regulation, along with monetary and fiscal policy, is one of the three key levers with which governments determine the economic development of their countries and the well-being of their societies. A well-developed regulatory policy, understood as a comprehensive process that governments use to create policies and regulatory measures, is of critical importance for a country in achieving its strategic goals.
Today, 8 years after the start of the regulatory reform in Bulgaria, the process of taking the most important decisions in the country – those on regulation through law – is still not sufficiently objective and transparent. These shortcomings have a direct impact on the quality of the normative acts produced. And the quality of legislation is directly proportional to the quality of life of Bulgarian citizens. There is an undeniable direct link between the quality of the legislative process and people’s well-being, the prospects for society and the development opportunities for the state.
What we observe today is the exact opposite of the expectations that the state and society had at the beginning of the regulatory reform.
- There is widespread legal nihilism. Non-compliance with, non-application and non-enforcement of the law has become the norm, and it starts with the people who adopt and impose the rules – the legislators in the National Assembly, who set the example for the whole of society with their own unlawful behaviour.
- There is a record collapse in the trust of citizens and society “in the system”, in the state and especially in the Bulgarian legislative body, which is due to the hasty, arbitrary and abundant legislating of recent years.
- The quality of Bulgarian normative acts, especially laws, continues to be unsatisfactory. This is a consequence of the formal application of ex-ante impact assessment especially by the National Assembly in recent years, etc.
- There is no feedback between the legislative process and law-enforcement activity, which is the result of the incomplete application of ex-post impact assessment of legislation.
- In our country there is still no comprehensive approach to public consultations in regulatory decision-making processes, due to the fact that for the eighth year the National Assembly has refused to comply with the requirements of the law and does not hold structured public consultations on the bills submitted by members of parliament.