We have engaged ourselves in a national effort to strengthen the function of the country’s institutions as well as the legal certainty to each citizen and potential investor, convinced that we can develop a strong legal
framework of rules, focusing on constitutional values and the development of the country.
In this context, any effort made to collect the key encoding rules and to generate provisions’ systematization and recording guides, relevant to sensitive and complex issues, should be welcomed.
This particular editorial initiative of Nomiki Bibliothiki constitutes a reliable and updated source of information on the operational framework of the Greek legal system, covering a wide range of issues concerning individuals and foreign entrepreneurs, and will certainly become an important tool for many organizational structures. We welcome this initiative, which we consider a systematic attempt to display the Greek institutional framework and we hope that this actually extrovert scientifc effort will develop and consolidate a sense of security for the existence and development of our country’s institutions.
Notwithstanding our wish to maintain a legal culture of achievements, today we must highlight the gaps and pathologies of a legal system, which had failed to meet the aforementioned objectives. In this context, any effort made, related to the collection of the key rules on the codifcation and the creation of systematization guides, along with the recording devices related to such sensitive and complex issues, should serve as a guiding beacon for our state initiatives as well as for the state structures that, in the future, will shape a different image for Greece,
internationally.
We acknowledge the existing problems. The issues that we owe to process now are, frstly, the operation of institutions and the legal certainty. Through the same courts’ decisions and the fndings of the independent authorities, the lack of coding on key issues of law sectors is evident, throughout the previous years, mainly on the dominant and most important corpus of rules, which concern, on one hand, the development processes of the country and, on the other hand, shape the country’s attitude on core issues of bureaucracy, corruption, accountability and protection of our goods.
The main axes of an administrational initiative involving the state should not, henceforth, simply be cited but they should be established, as a consciousness and state value:
• Improved and comprehensive lawmaking, with concrete targets and a timetable for the implementation of the rules.
• Codifcation
• Simplifcation
• Regulatory and electronic governance, as well as an implementation schedule.
In my opinion, a new coordination process is required for legislating actions, including planning and policy measures, in order for them to be promoted, in the logic of integrated databases and references for civil services. In addition, the accessibility to the regulations and procedures, in means of modern electronic and related platforms, needs to be integrated into our management practice.
It is my belief that what we can achieve through efforts made by codifcation and eGovernance guides is the development of our democracy. If we develop our legal foundations, along with the relevant procedures, we will succeed in eradicating the phenomena that have led to the crisis of institutions, of the state functions and of our values.
If we manage to adopt rules and guidance standards today, we will succeed in changing our image and in establishing practices to the beneft of all citizens.
What we describe is a reform. “The reform aims at limiting overregulation, along with updating and bowdlerizing the existing legislation in such a way that the remaining rules are correct, functional, intuitive and reasonable.” The aforementioned is not a writing of my own; it is the writing of a law which, like many others, has remained in the drawers of a glass tower, as a wishful thinking and a theory, in a case identical to the drawers of the current bureaucracy.
Should we mainly wish for the reform to affect the way we treat the concept of the state, to the beneft of the next generation, we should start now... The initiative of Nomiki Bibliothiki at hand can set an example destined for recovery…
