Report on legislative changes across the CEE region in 2022

• Eight CEE countries adopted 1,437 laws in 2022 – a 14% increase compared to pre-pandemic levels
• On average, almost 50% of laws had a direct impact on businesses

Almost 1,500 laws were adopted by the eight countries in Central and Eastern Europe, as shown by the AcTrend Report conducted by Grayling, the communications and government relations consultancy.

The report analysed legislative changes taking place in Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Croatia between January 1, 2022 – December 31, 2022.  Romania led in quantitative terms with more than one third (573) of the total number of laws, followed by Poland with 189 acts of primary legislation, Slovakia – 176 and Croatia – 158. At the opposite end are Serbia (60) and Hungary (83).

Compared to the figures from 2013-2017 there has been a 14% increase in the number of laws adopted by CEE countries in 2022. This can be reasoned by the fact that both post-covid recovery and the start of the Ukraine war motivated local legislators to adopt a larger number of acts governing both business and general environment.

The comparison between the number of laws adopted by extraordinary procedures, compared to regular ones, highlight 24.9% of the total number of laws adopted were passed by an extraordinary procedure – this number being higher for acts with direct impact on business (38.95%).

On average, 46.5% of laws had a direct impact on businesses, a result similar to pre-pandemic levels. Almost half of the adopted laws that had direct impact on the businesses covered general business topics (43.85%), while most affected sectors were services (13.59%) and finance (10.3%).

Centralisation of the legislative power into the hands of the Governments was especially noted in the case of legislation impacting businesses, as all analysed countries had less than 20% of acts, with an impact on business submitted by MPs in 2022. In Croatia, Hungary and Serbia none of the acts impacting businesses in previous year were submitted by MPs. Compared to pre-pandemic levels the number of legislative acts with an impact on business submitted by MPs halved in 2022.

The complete Grayling AcTrend 2022 report, with detailed information about number of laws adopted in specific countries, sectoral distribution and other relevant local specifics may be found here.