By Victoria Hasson, WFD's Senior Parliamentary Adviser Around the world parliaments are going virtual. But what this looks like, and its implications for the institution’s democratic standing, varies as widely as the impact of COVID-19 on any given country. The dangers of going digital are easy to anticipate and beginning to surface. What is clear [...]
By Chris Levick, WFD Regional Director, Europe & Central Asia Governments around the world have introduced emergency measures to fight the coronavirus, often alongside significant financial support packages designed to cushion the economic impacts of the virus and ensure livelihoods. Within Europe we have seen some extreme examples: The Hungarian parliament – with its hefty [...]
By Sir Lindsay Hoyle, Speaker of the UK House of Commons and Patron of Westminster Foundation for Democracy
How parliaments can uphold accountability for emergency powers granted to the executive
Parliaments and parliamentarians can monitor and manage global state efforts through sharing lessons of effective national legislative action. Parliaments and parliamentarians across the world can also support each other as they develop new working practices to support citizens
The emerging new public debt crisis in times of the pandemic needs urgent engagement by parliamentarians.
The COVID-19 pandemic is profoundly affecting work and businesses across the world, notwithstanding its health effects. Planned activities are delayed or cancelled, and meetings are complicated, whilst digital technology is now facilitating communication between co-workers and helping institutions to reach out to their audiences. Parliaments are among the institutions that cannot postpone their work and commitments. They play a crucial role [...]
Pandemics force humans to break with the past and imagine their worlds anew. Parliaments now need to break with the past to find new ways to legitimately support their citizens in a COVID and post-COVID world.
This guide is an introduction to independent oversight institutions and their relationship with parliament. It addresses institutions’ mandates, leadership, reporting, and budgeting, from the perspective of parliaments with their role to establish, oversee, and collaborate with independent institutions in order to strengthen democratic governance
As the involvement of parliaments in the ex–post stage of law making remains under-theorised, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy has just released a new publication, providing an analysis of the main rules, practices and trends on PLS in Europe, focusing on the experience of seven national parliaments: Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and the [...]
