Fifth Monitoring Report on the Quality of the Debate in the Parliament

The MPs increased their interaction, although without convincing themselves in the legitimacy of their arguments, thus remaining in their “trenches”.

The key-findings from the Fifth Monitoring Report (monitoring period 1-31 December, total 11 sessions) are that the discussion on the legal proposals remains weak, with somewhat bigger interaction among the MPs compared to the previous monitoring periods (19 June-1 August, 25 August- 30 September and November).

The increased interaction can be seen through the increased replies and counter-replies, especially on several topics like: the parliamentary questions, the amendments to the Law on High Education, the Law on Spatial and Urban Planning and the Law on Administrative Officials.

The participants in the monitored sessions yet again failed to show any interest and readiness for changing their views for the sake of a better quality arguments in the debate, resulting with none of the MPs changing their views. For most of the part, the speakers totally disregarded the arguments of the opposing MPs.

From the beginning of the monitoring up till now, the MPs had the least of arguments referring to the public good, whereas they mostly referred to abstract principles.

In December, the Opposition has increased their share in the discussions, reaching 21% compared to last month. As in October, this is the highest level of participation marked in the monitored sessions up till now.

In most of the discussions, the MPs elaborated their views with two or more arguments. In addition, the percent of discussions with one argument increased, while the number of discussions with no arguments at all decreased compared to the previous months.

Most of the items on the agenda went with small, one-sided or no discussion at all.

As a consequence, the public was once again deprived of a quality debate for part of the legal decisions. At the same time, the opportunity for testing the validity of the expressed arguments of the MPs and the chance for debating or amending them, leading to adopting better quality laws for the public benefit and interest, was missed.