Lawmaking Experience in Shaping National Legislation Regarding the Right to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32631/pb.2025.4.03Keywords:
right to freedom of peaceful assembly, lawmaking, draft law, legislative regulation of human and civil rights, respect for human rights and freedoms, legal certainty, quality of legislation.Abstract
The article examines the issue of legislative activity in the field of legislative regulation of the use and exercise of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly in Ukraine. Public and political opinion has repeatedly emphasised the need for legislative regulation of the obligations of both the subjects exercising this right and public administration bodies when organising and conducting peaceful assemblies. The article analyses quantitative and qualitative indicators of lawmaking, the quality of draft laws, their clarity, comprehensibility and consistency with the current legislation of Ukraine, and their compliance with constitutional norms. The study covers the Draft Law on Guarantees of Freedom of Peaceful Assembly, the Draft Law on the Procedure for Organising and Conducting Peaceful Events, the Draft Law on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly, as well as doctrinal views on lawmaking in the field of regulating the right to freedom of peaceful assembly in Ukraine. It concludes that these draft laws do not ensure the freedom to exercise the right to peaceful assembly, but rather are an attempt by the state to restrict this right by imposing additional obligations on persons wishing to exercise their right. The provisions of these draft laws indicate that they constitute regulatory material that should be applied not to regulate the general sphere of use and exercise of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, but to establish specific exceptions to these rules. At the same time, the proposed draft laws do not address a number of important issues, such as notification deadlines, the definition of the subject of notification, the powers of state authorities and local self-government bodies to ensure the unhindered exercise of this right, etc. With these draft laws, the legislator is attempting to legitimise additional obligations for those who enjoy the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, transforming a negative right, which is a guarantee of the exercise of other constitutional rights, into a positive right, the use or exercise of which depends on the discretion of public administration bodies. Based on an in-depth analysis, well-founded conclusions have been made regarding the quality of these draft laws and the advisability of improving them, as well as the importance for civil society of adopting relevant legislation in the field of freedom of peaceful assembly. It has been determined that the development of the legal system should be directed towards the adoption of legislative acts that clearly define the powers of public administration bodies in organising and conducting peaceful assemblies, as well as avoiding the imposition of additional obligations on those exercising this right.
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