Parliament’s sessions

Throughout its term, Lebanon’s Parliament convened 21 times as detailed below:

• Three sessions were held in 2009 and were all devoted to elections. Speaker and Deputy Speaker were elected in the first session; Secretary was elected in the second and members of the Parliamentary Committees in the third.
• Five sessions were held in 2010, of which four were legislative and one was assigned to elect members of the Parliamentary Committees.
• Seven sessions were held in 2011, of which five were legislative, one dedicated to discussing the ministerial statement and one to electing members of the Parliamentary Committees.
• Five sessions were held in 2012, of which three were concerned with legislation, one devoted to electing members of the Parliamentary Committees and one for general debate.
• Only one session was held in 2013 (until June 2013).

Ratified Laws

During a period of four years, 169 bills passed into laws in Parliament. Some of those were new while others were amendments to previous laws.

2009 Laws

No laws were approved in 2009.

2010 Laws

57 laws were approved in 2010, the most important of which are:

• Law No. 92 dated March 6, 2010: Preserving burned green areas and maintaining their purpose of use.
• Law No. 93 dated March 6, 2010: Extending the validity of the Rent Act latest until December 31, 2010.
• Law No. 98 dated March 6, 2010: Approving a USD 697 million loan agreement between the Lebanese government and the World Bank for the Urban Transport Development Project.
• Law No. 102 dated March 6, 2010: Granting elementary and middle public school teachers 3 exceptional steps of pay.
• Law No. 109 dated June 26, 2010: Granting the Ministry of Finance an advance worth LBP 75 billion to compensate the shareholders of the Consumer and Producer Cooperative Society.
• Law No. 110 dated June 26, 2010: Amending and extending the enforcement of the provisions of Law No. 322 issued on March 24, 1994 and allowing the displaced to construct on land without abiding by the legal requirements.
• Law No. 113 dated June 26, 2010: Replacing the name of the Nabatieh Al-Tahta town with Nabatieh.
• Law No. 115 dated June 26, 2010: Exempting the inheritors of the Ethiopian plane crash victims from the fees of legal proceedings and property transfer.
• Law No. 123 dated July 23, 2010: Granting credits worth LBP 20 billion for the renovation and equipment of Parliament.

2011 Laws

69 laws were approved in 2011, the most important of which are:

• Law No. 136 dated August 17, 2011: Approving a USD 19.6 million loan agreement between the Lebanese government and the Kuwaiti Fund for Arab Economic Development to finance the Qaysamani dam project.
• Law No. 137 dated August 17, 2011: Approving a USD 52.7 million loan agreement between the Lebanese government and the Islamic Development Bank to finance Akkar’s drinking water and sanitation project.
• Law No. 153 dated August 17, 2011 on the Lebanese Army Military Academy system.
• Law No. 159 dated August 17, 2011: Granting 4 exceptional steps of pay to secondary public school teachers and to Grade 2 and Grade 3 vocational education teachers.
• Law No. 161 dated August 17, 2011 on Financial Markets.
• Law No. 163 dated August 17, 2011: Delineation and Declaration of the Maritime Regions of the Lebanese Republic.
• Law No. 165 dated August 17, 2011: Approving a € 70 million loan agreement between the Lebanese government and the European Investment Bank to finance a wastewater treatment project in Kessrouan.
• Law No. 171 dated August 29, 2011: Extending the validity of the Rent Act latest until March 26, 2012.
• Law No. 172 dated August 29, 2011: Allocating credits worth LBP 19 billion from the 2011 state’s budget to construct prison buildings.
• Law No. 173 dated August 29, 2011: Approving new scale for judges’ salaries.
• Law No. 174 dated August 29, 2011: Smoking ban and organization of the he production, packaging and promotion of tobacco.
• Law No. 181 dated October 5, 2011: Approving a rapid program costing LBP 1772 billion to produce and distribute 700 megawatts of power.
• Law No. 186 dated November 18, 2011: Approving March 8 as an Alphabet Day in Lebanon.
• Law No. 187 dated November 18, 2011: Allocating additional credits worth LBP 16 billion from the state’s 2011 public budget for the upkeep of Parliament.
• Law No. 194 dated November 18, 2011: Addressing the needs of the Lebanese citizens who took refuge in Israel.
• Law No. 196 dated November 18, 2011: Reducing fines.

2012 Laws

42 laws were approved in 2012, the most important of which are:

• Law No. 206 dated March 5, 2012: Approving salary hike for the Lebanese University professors.
• Law No. 212 dated March 30, 2012: Approving foreign currency borrowing in order to meet the Treasury’s needs in foreign assets. The maximum amount to be borrowed by the government stands at USD 2 billion.
• Law No. 216 dated March 30, 2012: Reducing the annual prison calendar from 12 to 9 months.
• Law No. 223 dated April 2, 2012: Granting 4 exceptional steps of pay to public school teachers and to Grade 4 vocational teachers.
• Law No. 225 dated October 22, 2012: Approving the issuance of treasury bonds worth LBP 120 billion in domestic or foreign currencies so that the government can pay back the debts it owes to private hospitals.
• Law No. 227 dated October 22, 2012: Approving a USD 40 million loan agreement between the Lebanese government and the World Bank for the Educational Development Project.
• Law No. 234 dated October 22, 2012: Approving a USD 200 million loan agreement between the Lebanese government and the World Bank for the Greater Beirut Water Supply Project.
• Law No. 238 dated October 22, 2012: Assigning extra credits amounting to LBP 924.8 billion to cover the 2012 expenses.
• Law No. 243 dated October 22, 2012: New Traffic Law

Parliament’s Budget

It is commonly known that since 2006 no public budget has been approved in Lebanon and the spending and collection have been performed according to the “twelfth provision rule” with a few additional expenses every year. The annual budget assigned to Lebanon’s Parliament in 2009 stood at LBP 60.3 billion and showed no signs of growing any smaller in the years that followed, as illustrated in the following Table 1.

Source: Draft public budgets in the respective years

Cost of Every Law

According to the previous numbers, the expenses of Parliament from mid-2009 (beginning of Parliament’s term) until mid-2013 (expiry of Parliament’s term) amount to roughly LBP 265 billion, which translates into a cost of LBP 1.57 billion for each of the ratified laws.

In principle, it would seem unfair to bind the role and functions of Parliament to the number of laws it approves and the operational costs it requires, especially since the role of parliamentarians transcends legislative activity and extends to political practices and overseeing the government and the parliamentary committees. However, Lebanon’s Parliament has proved incapable of monitoring government actions due to collusive arrangements between the two, and the activity of parliamentary committees is too narrow to need supervision in the first place. Although some of the approved laws were indisputably paramount, they remain secondary amid Parliament’s consistent failure to fulfill its foremost duty, i.e. approving the public budget on a yearly basis and finalizing the closing of accounts in order to guarantee fiscal transparency. Worse yet, deputies did not succeed in approving a new Rent Act or a Coastal Property Act, which uncovers a blatant inability to act according to the minimum obligations expected of them.