Article by ALI for Ukrainska Pravda
The European Commission presented the Enlargement Report, which assessed the annual progress made by the candidate countries, including Ukraine. The Agency for Legislative Initiatives analysed the section of the report concerning the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
How did the European Commission mention the Rada in the report?
In its report, the European Commission (EC) underlined that the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, as a legitimately elected parliament, continues to function and perform its legislative role. This is a key element in maintaining the democratic system in Ukraine. Nevertheless, Ukraine’s European integration ambitions raise the bar for a positive assessment of the parliament’s work. Therefore, [in addition to noting the very fact of the existence and functioning of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine], questions arise about the efficiency and quality of its work.
Brussels drew attention to the following weaknesses in the work of the Ukrainian parliament:
- The legislative process suffers because the impact of draft laws on society is not assessed either before or after their adoption by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Therefore, the European Commission proposes to create a procedural and methodological framework for legislative impact assessments and post-legislative evaluation.
- Parliamentary oversight, which has been reduced to individual meetings between ministers and MPs, does not allow for optimal oversight of the executive branch. The European Commission proposes to re-establish more thorough and broader parliamentary oversight and public consultations.
- Restrictions on the rights of the opposition, especially regarding duty trips abroad. The European Commission emphasises that political dialogue and multi-party parliamentary diplomacy are vital for the democratic process.
Below, we will take a closer look at these three points highlighted by the European Commission.
Legislative impact assessment
The process of adopting any important decision in the EU begins with an impact assessment and ends not with the adoption of the law itself but with a post-legislative evaluation (which starts a new policymaking cycle). Such analyses help answer several questions:
- Why is it necessary to adopt a decision?
- What problem does it aim to solve?
- What are the alternatives? Is the proposed solution the most effective and efficient way to solve the problem?
- Will this decision resolve the problem?
Instead, the post-legislative evaluation stage should determine whether the decision has achieved its goal and whether the problem has been solved.
This is about decisions. The EU does not reduce everything to laws and does not treat the need for legislative regulation as an end in itself. Instead, for Ukraine, laws are both a carrot and a stick to influence society. All problem-solving boils down to the adoption of laws. “The more laws we pass, the better” is often the criterion guiding lawmakers. However, the impact of these laws is unknown to Ukrainian parliamentarians. This approach does not lead to solving problems but to an increase in the number of laws. That is why, when previous laws fail to solve the problem, MPs pass new laws. To break this vicious circle, the European Commission recommends introducing a procedural and methodological framework for legislative impact assessments.
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has already begun the journey from legislative chaos to data and evidence-based decision-making. Four committees of the Ukrainian parliament have already taken the first steps in mastering the methodology of legislative impact assessments in their work. The Agency for Legislative Initiatives assists in the application of this tool. The joint products of this work include pilot impact assessments and the Legislative Impact Assessment Handbook, which have laid the foundation for further development of the procedural and methodological framework for legislative impact assessment recommended by the European Commission.
Parliamentary oversight
For the Ukrainian parliament, traditionally overloaded with legislative functions (which often take the form of legislative spam), the oversight function has traditionally been “sagging.” The full-scale invasion, martial law and related events have created even more problems for its implementation. The share of ignored parliamentary inquiries and appeals has increased, and ministers are also more likely to ignore reporting to the Verkhovna Rada, despite repeated decisions of the Parliament to summon these ministers for reporting. As the European Commission has noted, as of the end of 2023, this oversight has been reduced to irregular, unstructured, and non-public meetings of individual ministers with individual groups of MPs. Such meetings, of course, do not provide quality oversight, which makes it more difficult We do not assess whether the Verkhovna Rada is willing or able to respond to such actions for the Verkhovna Rada to respond to ill-conceived, inefficient, or even questionable actions of executive branch institutions. However, without parliamentary oversight, the democratic system of the state itself is potentially at risk.
Nevertheless, some MPs are unwilling to tolerate an unaccountable government. They use several tools to address this.
First, in 2024, the practice of holding an “hour of questions” to the government began to resume, although the effectiveness of this mechanism has traditionally remained low.
Secondly, MPs of the ninth convocation use the tools of temporary investigative and temporary special commissions (referred to as TIC/TSCs) more often. During the current ninth convocation, the Verkhovna Rada created the most special commissions of any convocation of the Ukrainian parliament – 40. However, quantity does not always equal quality: the vigorous activity of the TIC/TSCs often does not yield practical results in the form of policy changes or punishment of wrongdoers (or at least preparation and approval of reports on their activities), and their usefulness is often limited to public discussion and informing the public.
The implementation of the 2016 recommendations, provided by the European Parliament’s mission chaired by Pat Cox and approved by a resolution of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, could help improve the oversight function.
For example, the parliament’s oversight function could be strengthened by such measures [envisaged by this resolution] as (1) the introduction of a unified format and structure of annual reports of ministries on the results of the implementation of programme documents or (2) the introduction of annual work plans for parliamentary committees to oversee (control) the executive branch of government.
However, the MPs decided not to follow such advice from the European Parliament. In general, the progress of the parliamentary reform leaves much to be desired. While the Verkhovna Rada Secretariat has implemented a significant part of the recommendations of the 2016 Pat Cox mission, progress for MPs is minimal. Perhaps this explains the European Commission’s attention to another dimension of the Ukrainian parliament’s work – restrictions on the work of the opposition in 2024.
Restriction of opposition rights
The European Commission points out the importance of the opposition being able to perform its functions. Brussels paid special attention to the restrictions faced by the parliamentary opposition when leaving the country for duty trips. The European Commission also stressed the importance of political dialogue between the parliamentary majority and minority.
Most of these issues were reflected in the recommendations of the 2016 European Parliament mission and could not have arisen in 2024 if measures to (1) regulate the status of the opposition, (2) create formal and informal platforms for inter-party dialogue, and (3) implement the Code of Ethics had been implemented.
There is a separate issue with foreign duty trips. It was not a problem in 2016, simply because MPs could travel freely abroad. Attending multilateral forums, meeting with foreign officials – essentially, everything that is considered “parliamentary diplomacy” in Ukraine – did not require the approvals needed during martial law. MPs did not have to coordinate their plans with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the parliamentary leadership at all. Of course, a significant question is how much such activities contribute to advancing the positions of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine as a unified multi-party body, rather than promoting individual ideas of MPs. At the same time, the logic of representing the Parliament as a unified multi-party body works both ways: neither the parliamentary majority nor the parliamentary minority can claim to represent the entire Parliament without involving representatives of the other party in foreign delegations. This is how foreign parliamentarians perceive the current situation in Ukraine, which they do not consider normal.
Why does the European Commission make recommendations?
The Enlargement Report is often referred to as the homework for the EU candidate countries. Homework for which the country receives a grade and, if the grade is high enough, the exam is considered passed (often the reward for passing the exam is financial assistance). Sometimes Ukraine takes advantage of the flaws in the assessment system and, like a bad student with flaws in the education system, creates the impression of reforms without any. Obviously, the European Commission expects something completely different from Ukraine, and it is quite capable of looking at what Ukraine shows it as results. Both the embodiment of EU values and the approximation to their standards require more than cosmetic changes from Ukraine in the form of formal adoption of another set of formal policies and legislation or implementation of minor recommendations. Ukraine as a whole and the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in particular truly need to change their practices and approaches, genuinely start assessing the consequences of their decisions, truly control the actions of the executive branch, and genuinely respect the rights of the opposition. Only this and nothing else will bring Ukraine into the family of civilised European states.
