The government is to scrap 2,300 laws dating from between 1975 and 1980 that are no longer needed but have lingered on the statute books as nobody thought to remove them.The Secretary of State for the Council of Ministers, Tiago Antunes, said that the track record for the current executive was exemplary as, "in the second year, this Government legislated less than in the second year of all previous governments."
Antunes said as well as legislating less, the António Costa government wants to, "clean up legislative acts that no longer make sense, are outdated, but have never expressly been revoked."
"Very soon we will approve the repeal of 2,300 decree-laws from 1975 to 1980, which are already outdated," said Tiago Antunes, adding that the government will approve the mass scrapping over the next month.
For the legislative activity of 2017, Antunes said that the government has been adopting measures to improve the quality of legislation, with its ‘better lawmaking’ initiative designed “to reduce the legislative flow" and to make sure EU laws get transposed on time.
The new lawmaking regime includes a section on ‘clarity’ to facilitate access to clearly written laws by citizens.
The government in 2016 paved the way for a ‘legislation lite’ regime as, "For the first time in more than 40 years of democracy, a Constitutional Government has published fewer than a hundred decrees-laws, with only 98 published," according to Antunes who pointed out the "269 approved in the same period in 2015.”
