Better Laws for Better Lives

What is the goal of this project?

The Lithuanian Free Market Institute’s project Better Laws for Better Lives is aimed to upgrade law-making quality standards in Lithuania which will eventually reverse the disturbing statistics and government overreach behind it.

What we are doing?

launching a law-making quality watch to monitor compliance with law-making standards;
building the case for needed improvements in law-making procedures;
focusing on legislative initiatives in economic and social policy issues with a wide-ranging impact on business activity and income mobility;
producing a scoreboard of regulatory quality and a roadmap of law-making procedures outlining systemic flaws and needed solutions.

What we have done already?

We produced two position papers on the law-making quality in specific legislative initiatives, including – an amendment to the Labor Code expanding the liability of contractors. LFMI argued that the amendment was ill-founded and in violation of law-making principles of proportionality, expediency, and validity and provided insights on the general state of the law-making process in Lithuania. We produced a position paper on the legislative quality of a Land Law amendment. LFMI assessed that the amendment and related proposals were submitted in violation of legislative requirements and key law-making principles.

Also, we have produced a research report which analyses the prerequisites for regulatory impact analysis and the issues of liability of law-makers during the legislative initiation phase.

LFMI initiated debates on law-making quality reform with the top leaders of the Parliament and Government, including the parliamentary speaker and deputy speakers, the prime minister, the chancellor of the government, leadership of parliamentary parties, and advisors to the PM and ministers.

A meeting was held with NGOs and associations to discuss the biggest challenges related to lawmaking, to agree on opportunities for ongoing cooperation, and to make suggestions to public authorities on how to improve areas related to lawmaking and public participation.

LFMI hosted radio programs:

a radio program on the quality of legislation in the sphere of labor relations and social security;
a radio program on the quality of legislation in the sphere of trademarks as private property and their creeping regulation;
a radio program on the quality of private property ownership restrictions in particular those of forests that violates the freedom of private ownership and competition;
a radio program on the quality of the law-making process and the possibilities of improving it (the Deputy Speaker of the Parliament MP Vytautas Mitalas participated in the program);
a radio program on the quality of the Bank Law amendment that would impose unjust and unfounded requirements to expand the ATM network in rural territories;
a radio program on the regulatory quality of the laws affecting the construction sector and the importance of impact assessment in law-making (MP Algirdas Butkevičius participated in the discussion);
a radio program on how the public sector can influence the changes in the quality of the law-making process;
a radio program on the reform of the public sector and how should the regulatory system change;
a radio program on the results of the creeping regulatory system;
a radio program on the proposals from the current government on how to make the regulatory quality better (MP Stasys Šedbaras participated in the program);
a radio programme discusses legislative impact assessment. Saulius Kotyla, the Senior Analyst at the Government Strategic Analysis Centre, was interviewed;
a radio programme focuses on what to do to ensure that a state audit does not remain a paper audit. The Auditor-General Mindaugas Macijauskas is featured;
a radio programme focuses on how to ensure that taxpayers are greeted and seen as clients in public institutions;
a radio programme discusses why it is important to fix bad laws and how to make this a priority for the Seimas and the Government. With Rasa Budbergytė, Member of the Seimas, and Mindaugas Macijauskas, Auditor General;
a radio programme discusses how to ensure the success of the restructuring of state-owned enterprises. The discussion includes Paulius Martinkus, former Deputy Minister of Transport and Communications, Head of the Strategy and Development Department of Vilnius Heat Networks, and Marius Horbačauskas, former Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Litexpo Exhibition and Congress Centre.

Produced articles:

an article on the quality of the budgetary law;
an article on the quality of law-making processes of the Government and supervisory authorities; the article was published in the news portal of the national news broadcaster LRT;
an article on the quality of law-making and the importance of impact assessment when considering new regulations;
an article on the issues of regulatory quality in general and in the construction sector;
an article on the lack of quality of the government’s policy of compensating businesses for operating restrictions, which is fraught with inconsistencies;
an article about the impact of the law-making process;
an article on what costs can poor quality law-making processes have;
an article on beaurocracy rules and their impact on people’s health.

On social media, we aimed to present issues related to legislative quality in an attractive and clear way. Most of the content was shared on Facebook and LinkedIn, where we presented proposals for improving the legislative process.