Parliamentary committees discussed 865 pieces of legislation 5,6 thousand times between 2016 and 2020, shows the updated website ManoSeimas.lt created by Transparency International Lithuania (TI Lithuania).
Overall, up to 5 thousand representatives of interest groups discussed various questions in committees’ meetings.
Draft legislation acts were discussed between 28 and 936 times. The most active committees were the Committee on Legal Affairs (936 questions, 297 pieces of legislation), the Committee on Social Affairs and Labour (684 questions, 205 pieces of legislation), the Committee on State Administration and Local Authorities (612 questions, 237 pieces of legislation), the Committee on Economics (572 questions, 229 pieces of legislation) and the Committee on Budgets and Finance (526 questions, 198 pieces of legislation).
The Committee on European Affairs discussed the fewest number of draft legislation acts (28 questions, 27 acts).
The most frequently discussed legislation was the Code of Administrative Offences (discussed 226 times). Almost all committees debated the Code during the last parliamentary term (14 out of 15). Around 139 representatives of interest groups took part in the debates, including one registered lobbyist (2 times).
Committees also actively debated the Code of Civil Procedure (79 times), Law on Local Self-Government (79 times), Civil Code (78 times), Law on Health Insurance (62 times), Law on Science and Studies (59 times), Law on Civil Service (59 times), Forestry law (56 times), Statute of Seimas (53 times) and Law on Personal Income Tax (51 times).
“I am glad that we have more and more information on how laws in the Parliament are created. I would very much like to see this Parliament open more data on committees and commissions work and structure it better. This would bring more transparency into politics and provide a clearer view of the legislative footprint”, – said Sergejus Muravjovas, the CEO of Transparency International Lithuania.
The updated ManoSeimas.lt website provides structured publicly available committees’ data for the 2016-2020 parliamentary term, collected in July 2020. The website also provides data about long-term permits to enter the Parliament and information about parliamentarians meetings.
A short summary of the findings can be found here.
More information: Sergejus Muravjovas, sergejus@transparency.lt, +370 5 212 69 51