Legislation red tape needs to be cut, says Vassiliou

By Martin Hellicar

THE introduction of new legislation needs to be fast-tracked if we are to maintain momentum towards EU harmonisation, the head of Cyprus’s EU accession talks team, George Vassiliou, warned yesterday.

Vassiliou said red tape meant that it took, on average, two to five years for new legislation to get from the drawing board to the cabinet to the House for approval.

“We cannot continue at this rate,” he said after a morning meeting with President Clerides.

The job could be done in much less than a year, he said.

Vassiliou said the President had agreed with him an action plan to speed up procedures for the introduction of new laws and legal amendments.

“The House has already decided to change its procedures and has broadened the remit of the foreign affairs committee to cover foreign affairs and European Union matters. The new committee will have sub-committees to examine various aspects, and I want to believe that now this system is being implemented we can move at much faster rates – for everyone’s good,” the United Democrats leader said.

He added that it had been agreed the various ministries and government services should work together when drawing up bills, rather that independently as tended to happen now.

“We will keep an eye on what each ministry has to do and we will ask that the legal services and ministries work together rather than waiting for each other to do it, as in the past.”

“In this way, work that would have taken two to three years will take two, three or six months, depending on the case,” Vassiliou said.

The time period for getting a prepared bill through the cabinet and tabled before the House could also be reduced from the current norm of six months to 15 days or a month, Vassiliou said.