National Assembly Advancement Act faces revision in 1 year

The National Assembly will amend the revised National Assembly Act (also known at the National Assembly Advancement Act), which is designed to prevent physical fight at the Assembly, only one year after the bill was passed by the parliament. Also, the implementation of the system on “automatic submission of a budget bill to the plenary session of the National Assembly,” which was to be introduced this year to keep legal deadline for approval of annual state budget, has been delayed by one year through consent by the ruling and main opposition parties even before the system took effect, rekindling concern that the parliamentary approval of budget could be delayed again this year.

According to the “bill on partial amendment of the National Assembly Act” obtained by The Dong-A Ilbo on Sunday, the timeline for implementation of subsidiary laws to the National Assembly Act will change from May 30, 2013 to May 30, 2014. The National Assembly Act provides the parliamentary plenary session with supplementary provisions on automatic submission of New Year’s budget and subordinate bills on budget. The parliament`s steering committee will hold a general meeting on Monday to deliberate on the revision bill to the National Assembly Act and plan to pass the bill at the parliamentary plenary session as early as May 3 or 6.

When amending the National Assembly Act in May last year, the ruling and opposition parties agreed to introduce a system that if a budget bill fails to pass the parliament by November 30, or 48 hours before the constitutional deadline (December 2) for approval, the bill would be automatically submitted to the parliamentary plenary session on December 1. As budget bills had failed to pass the National Assembly by the deadline due to extreme confrontation between the rival parties every year since 2003, the parties thus decided to introduce the system that requires automatic submission of budget bills to the plenary session.

However, the system faced a new obstacle because a revision bill to the Government Finance Act failed to pass during April’s extraordinary session of the National Assembly. As the parliament set May 30, 2013 as the day to start implementation of the new system requiring automatic submission of budget bills and subordinate bills, when revising the National Assembly Act last year, it decided to advance the deadline for the government to submit its budget plan -- from October 2, or 90 days prior to the opening of a new fiscal year as auxiliary condition--, but this requirement has failed to be met.

The parliamentary committee on strategy and finance, which is the standing committee in charge of the matter, approved at its general meeting last Monday a revision bill of the Government Finance Act, which calls for advancing 10 days each time every year for three years from 2014, when a bill for 2015 budget will be submitted. Earlier, members of the ruling and opposition parties submitted revision bills to the Government Finance Act advancing the deadline for the government to submit its annual budget bill from 90 days prior to the opening of a new fiscal year to 120 days, and also to the Act on Private Sector Investment in Social Overhead Capital.

sungho@donga.com