Reorganizing the Legislative Reform

On 3 May 2017, a presidential decree (the “Decree”) was issued reorganizing the Supreme Committee for Legislative Reform (the “Committee”).[1] The Committee had played a key role in the legislative process since its formation in June 2014 (as the first presidential act of President Al-Sisi), but has gradually decreased in importance over last year. The reorganization and reestablishment of the Committee had become necessary after changing the mandate of the former Ministry of Transitional Justice and Parliamentary Affairs, which has now become the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs. While substantively the Committee maintains nearly the same role it had since its formation in 2014, the new Decree provides that it shall for the purposes of implementing its mandate work on preparing regulatory impact assessments for new legislation.

Background

A legislative committee under the Prime Minister has existed since 1988. Until 2013, such committee was headed by the Minister of Justice and had the less ambitious mandate of coordinating between draft laws written by different ministries, although it could also suggest legal reforms of its own initiative. In January 2013, a new committee, titled the “Supreme Committee for Legislative Affairs” was formed. The 2013 committee was headed directly by the prime minister and was tasked specifically with ensuring the consistency of Egyptian laws with the 2012 Constitution. In June 2014, a presidential decree abolished the 2013 committee, establishing in its place the Supreme Committee for Legislative Reform, which is the subject of the latest amendment. The Committee’s main objective, as determined in the 2014 presidential decree, is preparing and drafting new laws, decrees, and bills in line with Egypt’s 2014 Constitution. The Committee had a large role to play, especially during the time which preceded the formation of the current House of Representatives, which held its first session on 10 January 2016. The Committee includes the membership of the Ministers of Justice, Defence, Interior and Parliamentary Affairs, the Chief Justice of the State Council, the state mufti, along with other representatives.

The New Decree

Administratively, the main change is that the Committee’s rapporteur will now be the Minister of Justice, instead of the Minister of Transitional Justice and Parliamentary Affairs. The latter ministry had already been rebranded as the Ministry of Legal and Parliamentary Affairs in 2016, and has now become the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs. It is to be noted that appointment to the Committee has become more of a direct prerogative of the Executive branch, in comparison to the presidential decree issued in June 2014 (“Decree 2014”). For instance, Decree 2014 stipulated that membership would include academics, judges and lawyers, but it allowed representative entities (such as the Supreme Judicial Council and the Lawyers’ Syndicate) to select those members. In the recent Decree, selection powers moved to the Executive, with some positions requiring the approval of representative entities. A few other administrative changes were made to the newly formed Committee, such as assigning a judge to be the rapporteur, instead of a minister, and making special financial provisions to the Committee. At large, the Committee’s role and functions remain substantively the same. Other than the administrative changes, the recent Decree gave the Committee the mandate to create a national legislation database and to construct a system for the evaluation of the socio-economic impacts of any proposed legislation.  It is worth noting here that this role is very similar to that of the National Committee for Modernizing Legislation (known as the “ERRADA initiative”). ERRADA was established in 2008 by the Egyptian government with foreign funding in order to overhaul and revise all economic legislation, and then move to the stage of undertaking the preparation of studies on the social and economic impact of new legislation. ERRADA had indeed been successful over the years in establishing a database of economic legislations and making several amendment proposals. It is therefore unclear whether the Supreme Committee for Legislative Reform in its new form and role will replace ERRADA, cooperate with it, or whether there is some conflict and repetition of competencies.   [1] Presidential Decree No. 209/2017 reorganizing the Supreme Committee for Legislative Reform, Official Gazette, Issue No. 17 (bis) (e), 3 May 2017.