Government legislative program for 2017
03/10/2017
The Government of Kosovo has approved the legislative program for 2017 in the third Government meeting held on the 18th of September 2017. At this meeting, the Government approved its Work program for the period 2017-2021 and the legislative program for the first year and both documents are made public on the website of the Office of the Prime Minister. It is worth to clarify that this is the second legislative program of the Government for 2017 because of the resignation of the past Government and set up of the new Government since early September this year. The past Government had approved the legislative program for 2017 in the last meeting held on the 30 of December 2016 and had planned less laws compared to this program: two laws less than the current program and a different combination when it comes to the number of laws to be supplemented and laws to become new laws after they get approved by the Assembly. As a result, 53 laws will become new ones after they get approved in the Assembly compared to 45 ones of the past program and less draft laws to supplement the existing laws, 28 the actual program and 34 the past program.
However, the legislative program changes over the year which means that new draft laws can be included to the legislative program by Government decisions, but it could also happen that any from the planned draft laws gets removed due to various reasons of Ministries.
The legislative program for 2017 consists of 81 draft laws where 53 ones are draft laws to be transformed into new laws after they get approved from the Assembly and 28 ones to supplement the existing laws. Out of 21 ministries, 15 of them and the Office of the Prime Minister have planned to draft laws while six other ministries have not planned to draft any laws so far, such as: the Ministry of Communities and Return (MCR), the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports (MCYS), Ministry of Innovations and Entrepreneurship (MIE), Ministry of Economic Development (MED), Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Rural Development (MAFRD) and Ministry of Regional Development (MRD).
Table 1: ministries which have planned to draft laws during 2017 according to the current legislative program for 2017
As can be noticed from the table above, the Ministry of Justice has planned the biggest number of draft laws (15 in total) followed by the Ministry of Finance and Office of the Prime Minister. In the case of Ministry of Finance, it should be noted that a number of draft laws of this Ministry will be for the ratification of international agreements which are made so through the laws. In comparison to 2016 but also to other years when more laws have been planned to supplement the existing laws (laws in force), the Government legislative program for 2017 consists of more laws to be transferred as new laws after they get approved by the Assembly of Kosovo. In addition, it consists of a smaller number of draft laws planned in total compared to other previous years.
Graph 1: the number of draft laws (2011-2017) for the supplement of existing laws and new laws
