Parliamentary Oversight of Sustainable Development Goals and the Application of Post-Legislative Scrutiny Principles

Abstract

The United Nations 2030 Agenda is a global framework for sustainable development. While the Executive in each country has a mandate to implement the respective measures, parliaments are entrusted with passing the related legislation as well as overseeing its implementation. This paper sheds light on the engagement of parliaments to control implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For this purpose, institutional and non-institutional measures from a wide range of parliaments were evaluated and a general assessment framework has been developed, leading to the determination of a set of basic types of dedicated parliamentary bodies that handle SDG related issues and the nature of their cooperation with extra-parliamentary stakeholders. In this context, the Post-Legislative Scrutiny concept, which assesses both legal and impact dimensions of law implementation, has been studied, in order to prove whether it constitutes a viable long-term contribution to accelerate the achievement of the SDGs. Based on examples of good practice, the paper presents tangible recommendations and urges parliaments to upscale action related to the achievement of the SDGs, as an additional means to strengthen their own position in the institutional system.

Keywords: parliamentary oversight, parliamentary committees, parliamentary procedures, sustainable development, SDGs, post-legislative scrutiny