Troika demands abolition of the legislative acts

Late on Friday evening, the Finance ministry proceeded to a hasty transformation of the form of the 6-pack of legislative acts, thus creating concern and suspicion in the opposition parties.. As announced by finmin Yannis Stournaras, 5 of the 6 acts, which constitute prerequisites for the disbursement of the remaining amount of the January tranche, were resubmitted in parliament in the form of an urgent bill. As government members said, this was done because there was discomfort on the part of Greece’s lenders as to the government's choice in using almost exclusively this particular way of legislating.

The same information wants the government having planned to vote on these acts by January 21, the date of the next Eurogroup. However, the government was asked not only to change them into a bill, but also to bring them up to a vote before the Euro Working Group next Tuesday.

This is because a legislative act which is important comes as an urgent procedure and the Greek government is using it to implement a number of provisions from the moment it is published in the government gazette. It does not need to wait for the parliamentary processes and the vote on its implementation. It is submitted within 40 days and the parliament must ratify it within 3 months. In the meantime, the articles it contains are normally implemented. The Greek government is exploiting this practice to convince its partners that it has fulfilled its commitments and avoid, at least temporarily, the arduous parliamentary procedures.

However, as the same government member said, «we are done with the legislative acts. Only an earthquake will make us legislate like that again.»