We need fewer laws and more effective enforcement

SÉRVULO IN THE PRESS 15 Jan 2019 in Dia 15

Inês Palma Ramalho, a lawyer in SÉRVULO’s Finance and Governance department lawyer, has written an opinion article on the Observatory of Portuguese Legislation, launched by New University of Lisbon's in 2005. The article was published in Dia 15 newspaper.

Since its foundation, the Observatory has published bulletins that analyse the period of legislative production between 2000 and 2016. An analysis allows us to formulate three main conclusions: “(i) we seem unable to resist the temptation to legislate profusely (an annual average of 1730 laws were published in this period and, in many of these years, the number comfortably exceeded two thousand); (ii) the trend has been decreasing but Portugal continues, albeit not with the vigour of old, to legislate extensively (in 2015, 1168 laws were published); and (iii) of all types of instruments available to the legislator, the Government’s preferred option seems to be the ordinance.”

The full version of the opinion article can be read here.