Public participation in the legislative process of the Republic of Azerbaijan: the current state of legal regulation and prospects for further development of legislation
Authors: Abdullazada F. 
Published: December 2022

The article examines the features of public participation in the legislative process of the Republic of Azerbaijan. The current state of legal regulation of public participation in the legislative process under the legislation of the Republic of Azerbaijan is analyzed. In particular, it was found that in the legislation of the Republic of Azerbaijan, this issue is regulated by regulating the participation of natural persons-citizens of the Republic of Azerbaijan. In order to realize the right of citizens to initiate a draft law, an Initiative Group is created from the number of at least 300 citizens of the Republic of Azerbaijan, who have the right to submit a draft to the Parliament. In addition, the members of the Initiative Group must collect the signatures of at least 40,000 eligible voters of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and the collection of signatures must cover at least 60 electoral districts and at least 500 signatures must be collected from each electoral district. However, despite, at first glance, the indisputable positive value of this norm, in practice the specified requirements set forth in the draft law create significant obstacles to the implementation of the right of legislative initiative and the participation of civil society in the decision-making process. Public access to up-to-date information on legislative activity and the legislative process is also not sufficiently ensured at present. Given this, legislative activity and the decision-making process are only partially transparent to the public. As a rule, most draft laws and transcripts of Milli Majlis meetings are available for review on the official Milli Majlis website. However, Transcripts of parliamentary committee debates are not published. Given this situation, compliance with the principle of transparency of the legislative process seems somewhat doubtful. An obvious gap is the lack of rules and regulations regarding electronic signatures and electronic registration, which can be used when creating an initiative group and collecting signatures in support of the draft law. Given that the growing role of e-parliament is now one of the main issues of public policy, it is unwise to ignore e-signatures and e-registration provisions. The need for further improvement of the legislation of the Republic of Azerbaijan in terms of regulating public participation in the legislative process is emphasized. An obvious gap is the lack of rules and regulations regarding electronic signatures and electronic registration, which can be used when creating an initiative group and collecting signatures in support of the draft law. Given that the growing role of e-parliament is now one of the main issues of public policy, it is unwise to ignore e-signatures and e-registration provisions. The need for further improvement of the legislation of the Republic of Azerbaijan in terms of regulating public participation in the legislative process is emphasized. An obvious gap is the lack of rules and regulations regarding electronic signatures and electronic registration, which can be used when creating an initiative group and collecting signatures in support of the draft law. Given that the growing role of e-parliament is now one of the main issues of public policy, it is unwise to ignore e-signatures and e-registration provisions. The need for further improvement of the legislation of the Republic of Azerbaijan in terms of regulating public participation in the legislative process is emphasized. that the growing role of electronic parliament is now one of the main issues of public policy, it is unwise to ignore electronic signatures and electronic registration provisions. The need for further improvement of the legislation of the Republic of Azerbaijan in terms of regulating public participation in the legislative process is emphasized. that the growing role of electronic parliament is now one of the main issues of public policy, it is unwise to ignore electronic signatures and electronic registration provisions. The need for further improvement of the legislation of the Republic of Azerbaijan in terms of regulating public participation in the legislative process is emphasized.