All modern democracies are based on the principle of popular sovereignty. Within a democratic state, popular sovereignty can be exercised indirectly or directly. Parliament thus represents an indirect form of democracy, since even according to the Slovenian Constitution, the National Assembly as a representative body, in accordance with the principle of separation of powers, performs the most important legislative activity. The procedure for the adoption of the law is governed by the Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly. The legislative procedure defined in this way is a collection of precisely regulated rules that determine the conditions and criteria for the behavior of individual participants and their actions.
As an exception to the regular legislative procedure, the Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly regulate the emergency legislative procedure, which is subject to certain different rules. It can only be proposed by the Government if it considers that the adoption of the law is necessary due to the interests of the security or defense of the country or to eliminate the consequences of natural disasters or to prevent difficult-to-repair consequences for the functioning of the state. The collegium decides on the procedure, its decision can be verified at a session of the National Assembly. There is no general discussion within the first phase, the second and third discussions are held at the same meeting, deadlines for individual rules do not apply, amendments can also be submitted orally.
The emergency legislative procedure is basically intended for the adoption of urgent laws that are the result of unexpected circumstances. Therefore, it should only be used exceptionally, but in an average of eight mandates, the Slovenian parliament adopted more than a third of the laws by emergency procedure. Until the amendment of the Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly in 2002, the procedure was called the fast procedure for the adoption of a law, and it had been used since 1922. Over the course of history, the conditions set as a condition for its acceptance have been tightened, and since 2002 only the Government can propose it.
The emergency procedure is known mainly in the countries of Eastern Europe, including the countries of the former Yugoslavia, in Western Europe and beyond, in a lesser extent. Formal procedures for faster adoption of the law are regulated in constitutions, laws, rules of procedure of parliaments or other acts. There are many more informal options for speeding up the legislative process, which are described in the relevant literature. The ways in which countries accelerated the legislative process can be seen primarily from the legislative activity that individual countries carried out at the onset of the pandemic of the infectious disease COVID-19. Because of the necessity of taking the necessary measures, governments everywhere took over the legislative activity of parliaments to a large extent, but because they thus interfered with human rights, the measures were also subject to constitutional review.
As the legislative procedure originated in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, its concept has been adopted by most of the countries that regulate it. Slovenia also adopted some peculiarities from the German system, which is why these two models are specially processed in the doctoral dissertation in such a way that the differences with the Slovenian system are visible.
According to the Constitution, the Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly and the legislative procedure are constitutional institutions, which should therefore have special weight, but from the presentation of their regulations and practice, it follows that both can be misused or improperly implemented.
Several foreign regulations, as well as the Slovenian one, do not allow a legislative referendum for some laws. According to the Constitution, among other things, a legislative referendum is inadmissible on laws that are adopted to ensure the defense of the country, security or elimination of the consequences of natural disasters, and these are elements that are similar to the conditions for consideration of the law by emergency procedure. Their elements were defined by the Constitutional Court in individual decisions, as the assessment was carried out on the basis of an express provision of the Act on Referendum and People's Initiative, which establishes a special procedure even after the adoption of these laws. Namely, after the adoption of the law stipulated in the second paragraph of Article 90 of the Constitution, the National Assembly can adopt a Decision on the inadmissibility of the referendum. The Constitutional Court, according to the procedure specified in this law, assesses the constitutionality of the law thus adopted within 30 days. If it finds that the law was adopted according to an unconstitutional procedure, it can also annul its individual provisions.
In its constitutional jurisprudence, the Constitutional Court also established the doctrine of abuse of legislative referendum and legislative powers, therefore abuses of emergency procedures are also dealt. Special attention is devoted to the issue of excessive reluctance of the Constitutional Court in assessing an urgent legislative procedure, as it may affect the principle of democracy, the rule of law, the principle of separation of powers, as well as the dignity and right to equal treatment of members of the opposition.
In the doctoral dissertation, a comprehensive analysis of the urgent legislative procedure is given, warnings are given about improper implementation and instructions are given for more appropriate and constitutionally compliant behavior of the National Assembly, the Government and the Constitutional Court.
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