Legislative process

Check how the legislative procedure works a ''step by step''.

Basic legislative procedure

Basic legislative procedure in the House of Representative and the House of Peoples includes: Introduction of a draft law, first committee phase, first reading before the House, second committee phase, and second reading before the House.

Summary and emergency procedures

The Rules of Procedure stipulates that the draft law can be considered in summary procedure. If the House agrees to consider a draft law in summary procedure, all the terms from the regular legislative procedure shall be reduced to a half, and the Collegium may additionaly limit the duration of debate. The emergency procedure may be employed when the draft law is given high emergency status, i.e. when the draft law is not so complex that it could be either adopted or rejected. When emergency procedure is employed, there shall be no options for amendments.

A proposed decision of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH in the House of Peoples can be declared destructive to the vital national interest of the Bosniak, Croat, or Serb people by a majority votes from the Bosniak, Croat or Serb delegates. Such a proposed decision has to be approved in the House of Peoples by a majority of Bosniak, Croat, and Serb delegates who are present and voting.

In case the majority of Bosniak, Croat or Serb delegates object to this decision, the Speaker of the House of Peoples will immediately convene a Joint Commission consisting of three delegates, each elected among the club of Bosniak, Croat, and Serb people, in order to resolve the issue. If the Joint Commission fails to resolve the issue within five days, the case will be transferred to the BiH Constitutional Court which will review the procedural correctness of the matter, under emergency procedure.

Prior submitting of the proposed draft law into second committee phase, the responsible committees may decide to conduct public hearings on the draft law, which would involve all interested parties, professional institutions and individuals. A public hearing shall last no longer than fifteen days.

Invited individuals and representatives of the bodies and institutions shall provide their opinions on issues related to the draft law, if so requested by the Committee. The Committee shall include in its report the conclusions and the results of the public hearing, and attach in annex the papers and materials submitted in the course of hearing. The transcript of the hearing, if any, shall be also attached.

A proposed draft law may be introduced by any representative, or a delegate, committee of the House, joint committee of both Houses, the Houses, as well as the BiH Presidency and the BiH Council of Ministers within the scope of their respective competencies.
Afterwards, the Collegium of each House shall submit the proposed draft law to the appropriate Constitutional – Legal Committee and a responsible committee for their opinions about the proposed law.
Constitutional – Legal Committee shall consider, in the first stage, whether the proposed draft law is harmonized with the BiH Constitution and the legal system, while the responsible committee shall discuss the principles
In case if both committees provide positive opinions, the discussion on Constitutional grounds and principles, on which the proposed law is based on, shall be initiated, and adoption of the proposed law shall be in accordance with the opinions by the Constitutional – Legal Committee and a responsible committee. Afterwards, the proposed law can be either adopted or rejected.
The responsible committee shall initiate debate on the proposed law and submitted amendments.
Both Houses shall debate on positive report of the responsible committee and vote on the proposed amendments, following the articles related to amendments. What follows is voting on the proposed law in its final text.

A negative opinion of the responsible committee can be accepted and the proposed law rejected, or negative opinion can be rejected and the proposed law returned to the committee for reconsideration.
Adopted text of the law shall be harmonized with the text from other House. If both texts are identical, the text of the law shall be published in the Official Gazette of BiH, thus, the legislative procedure of passing the law is completed.

If the texts of the law are not identical, they need to be harmonized, and afterwards published in the Official Gazette of BiH.

Right