There is an elephant in the room of the Greek state. It is enormous, immovable, and everyone sees it, yet very few dare to name it: the problem of poor lawmaking and excessive legislation. If we want to speak honestly about the deeper causes of the country’s systemic weaknesses, we must admit that almost all of our major problems—from bureaucracy and corruption to state inefficiency and low trust in institutions—begin and end with the way we draft, manage, and enforce laws.
What are Excessive Legislation and Poor Lawmaking?
Excessive legislation: The overproduction of laws, provisions, amendments, and regulations that overlap with or even contradict one another (OECD, 2011).
Poor lawmaking: The low quality of laws: vague wording, contradictory provisions, legislation that raises more questions than it resolves (European Commission, 2012).
A Self-Undermining System
As analyzed in the study, the Greek institutional system constantly produces new laws without checking whether existing regulations could already address the problem, without examining what other countries are successfully doing, and without evaluating the real impact of each new intervention (Excessive Legislation, Poor Lawmaking, and Bureaucracy in Greece, diaNEOsis).
The result? An endless accumulation of legislation, with MPs and governments legislating to demonstrate activity or serve interests, rather than focusing on substance and functionality.