Grayling Central and Eastern European (CEE) Public Affairs Group has published the second edition of its Grayling AcTrend Report. The study examined laws passed in six CEE countries, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, between 1st August 2014 and 1st August 2015. The report also provides an overview on the political environment and outlook on governments’ activities across the region.
Grayling's Public Affairs teams used publicly available data (mainly parliamentary websites) for their research and the report covers acts of Parliament only.
In all six CEE markets, 1041 acts were approved between 1 August 2014 and 1 August 2015. Interestingly, this is a 17% increase compared to the same period last year, when 891 acts were approved.
Similar to last year’s results, the most active countries of the region remained to be Romania, with 290 acts passed, followed by Poland with 249 and Hungary with 214.
45% of the approved acts (468 out of 1041) had a direct impact on business, while more than a third of them affected the business sector in general (36%). Out of the sector-specific laws, the largest amount of acts approved was in the financial services (14%) and agriculture (14%) sectors. ICT, industry and interestingly energy were among the least impacted sectors across the region.
Across CEE, 17% of approved acts with an impact on business were passed by an extraordinary procedure, slightly less than last year. As in 2014, it was the most common method in this year as well in Romania, where 55% of acts were approved using the Government’s Emergency Ordinance. Even if their overall number decreased by 7% over the last year, several NGOs claimed that the Government adopted a new strategy in order to reduce the extraordinary procedures, and at the same time continue to ensure the swift implementation of new provisions.
Gergely Ábrahám, Head of Public Affairs Practice Group of Grayling in CEE, commented: “The astounding amount of three acts approved every day on average in the last twelve months, totaling to an all-time high of 1041 acts passed, is primarily a consequence of the activities of the three most active markets: Romania, Poland and Hungary. These countries alone adopted 165 more acts than last year, while there were no significant changes in the other CEE markets. In the future, we can expect fluctuations in these numbers as Romania approaches the 2016 elections, Poland is awaiting its parliamentary election, and as Hungary’s legislative procedures affecting everyday life are expected to slow down due to the migration crisis”.
The report is available to download here.