“Initiating assessment of the impact of a legislative act, as well as holding public consultations are to become  mandatory  in the process of decision making in the rest of the mandate of the 43rd National Assembly,” stated the Chairperson, Tetska Tscaheva, at the opening of the international symposium titled: “The Decision and its Assessment”.

She reminded the audience that at the beginning of April, 2016, the National Assembly had passed amendments to the Law for the Normative Acts. The amendments introduce, for the first time, in the Bulgarian legislation the notion of impact assessment of legislation. The assessment will be carried out with regards to legislative acts, submitted by the Council of Ministers or by individual lawmakers.
 
"The current process of passing laws does not always meet the approval of citizens and NGOs," said Tetska Tsacheva. She expressed confidence that the amendments will heighten the trust in the institutions and the representative democracy. We need to get back the trust of people and for this reason we need to go to the end of this priority. The Parliament’s Chairperson noted the latter should proceed to adopt  amendments to its current Rules of Organization and Procedure.

She thanked the scientific community and the teams who had started the work on the amendments of the Law for the Normative Acts at the very beginning of the mandate of the 43rd  National Assembly.

The Chair of the parliamentary Legal Affairs Committee, Danail Kirilov, said he hopes the symposium will be constructive and generate new ideas. He noted the amendments in the above law had been passed with the votes of the majority. He noticed that the current Rules of Organization and Procedure of the NA contain texts about impact assessment and effectiveness of laws. Despite this fact though the process has never been initiated with several exceptions. The amendments describe the methodology for impact assessment of laws and codes, submitted by the deputies. The process of drafting a legislative act will include public hearings with the participation of citizens and legal entities.
 
At the opening took the floor the ambassador of France, H.E. Xavier Lapeyre de Cabanes,  political scientist Antoniy Galabov, Prof. Gilles Roux – Director of the Higher Institute of Management “St Quentin”, France, representatives of Bulgarian and European institutions and universities, NGOs.