1.5 years of current Ukrainian Parliament: MPs submit legislative initiatives but don't vote for them

Verkhovna Rada of VIII convocation has already been working for 1.5 years. Although it has beat the record of previous convocations in the number of registered draft laws and resolutions, the number of adopted legislative initiatives is still lower. Such conclusion was made by analysts of Civil Network OPORA, who realize the parliamentary monitoring.

OPORA has prepared some reports concerning efficiency of the current Parliament over 1.5 years of its work, analyzed gender breakdown of MPs' activities and assessed the efficiency and openness of parliamentary committees.

The first 1.5 years of the current Parliament were quite fruitful in law-making compared to the previous convocations of the Parliament. Thus, there were 6,755 draft laws and resolutions registered in the Parliament over this period, and 6,106 of them were submitted by MPs. Thus, the MPs have submitted 90% of registered law initiatives, Government – 8% and the President – a little more than 1%. However, almost a half of legislative initiatives from MPs are draft resolutions, while the Government and the President submitted mostly draft laws. Around 50% of all registered draft laws and draft resolutions were drafted by one author each. 84% of legislative initiatives were drafted by 5 authors each. Thus, there is little legislative initiatives, which have a broad support in the Parliament on initial stage of adoption.

AUU Batkivshchyna and Radical Party have the largest number of bills per MP and the largest number of registered legislative initiatives in Parliament. Thus, each MP from the Batkivshchyna party has developed 82 draft laws and resolutions in average, Radical Party – 77. As for the individual rating of law-making activeness, Serhii Vlasenko is on the first place (407 legislative initiatives), with Ruslan Kniazevych (399) and Volodymyr Hroisman (submitted 329 legislative activities before appointment to the position of Prime Minister) after him. The most active women law-makers are: Olena Ledovskykh (333 legislative initiatives), Olena Boiko (329), and Liudmyla Denisova (187).

According to the monitoring results, women turned out to be more active in preparation and registration of legislative initiatives compared to men. Thus, one woman MP has developed 61 draft laws and resolutions in average, while one man MP – 43. Majoritarian MPs registered less draft laws (40%) compared to MPs elected by party lists (60%).

At the same time, less than one third of all registered bills (27%) were considered on plenary sessions of the current Parliament. Thus, 1,333 legislative initiatives were adopted and entered into force. It's 14% less than by the previous convocation of Parliament over the same period of time. Only around 5% of the adopted draft laws and resolutions were supported by more than 300 MPs. Draft Law on Making Amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine received the biggest number of votes in the Parliament (concerning immunity of judges and MPs of Ukraine). It was supported by 367 MPs. The rest of initiatives were supported by majority of MPs.

As for the correlation of initiated and adopted bills (not including draft resolutions), the most successful authors are former MPs Yurii Lutsenko(56%), Liliia Hrynevych (43%) and Taras Kutovyi (42%).

The following committees have the best statistics of successful adoption of bills under their jurisdiction in the Parliament: Committee on European Integration – 62% (38 of 61 were adopted), Committee on Foreign Affairs – 60% (68 of 114), Committee on Preventing and Combating Corruption – 37% (23 of 62), Committee on Judicial Policy and Justice – 35% (266 of 764), and the Committee on National Security and Defense – 26% (71 of 269 bills were adopted).

Talking about the European Ukraine coalition (existed from November 2014 to February 2016), the People's Front, Petro Poroshenko Bloc and Radical Party of Oleh Liashko voted jointly the most often (on over 80% of considerations). After the parliamentary coalition was reformatted in April 2016, we noticed the major changes in behavior of the Radical Party of Oleh Liashko and Samopomich Union. The Radical Party had similar position to the People's Fron and the Petro Poroshenko Bloc as usual, but the number of joint votings has decreased. At the same time, the Samopomich Union become more coordinated with the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, People's Front and Batkivshchyna.

Attendance and activeness at meetings of parliamentary committees is another important aspect of law-making activities of an MP of Ukraine. In December 2015 – May 2016, the People's Front has had the best attendance at meetings of committees. The Samopomich Union has 79% attendance; Petro Poroshenko Bloc – 78%; AUU Batkivshchyna – 74%; Radical Party – 65%; Volia Narodu group – 60%; Revival group – 46%; Opposition Bloc – 46%; and non-faction MPs – 59%. It should be mentioned that women MPs have proven to be better disciplined than men MPS when it comes to attendance on meetings of committees. The average attendance of women MPs over this period is 72%; men – 71%.

According to the results of a research verifying transparency of VRU committees of VIII convocation, made by the Civil Network OPORA over 1.5 years, most of committees publish less than a half of information, which must be published on their websites. Thus, only 6 committees publish more than 50% of the required information. The Committee on State Building, Regional Policy and Local Self-Government publishes the biggest amount of information, the Committee on Industrial Policy - the smallest amount.

Prepared under USAID's Accountability, Responsibility, and Democratic Parliamentary Representation (RADA) Program, supported by the Eastern European Fund