As the current term of the Lithuanian Parliament draws to a close, the Lithuanian Free Market Institute has analysed decision of the outgoing legislature and assessed the voting patterns of the current parliamentary parties. LFMI’s tailor-made research publication Five Steps Forward and Five Steps Backwards identifies the most significant policy decisions that have provided a boost for the country’s economy by reducing bureaucracy and regulation as well as those which have hindered the progress and examines party voting patterns on the policy decisions under discussion.

The publication presents top five positive and bottom five negative policies that range from increasing labour flexibility with new types of employment contracts as introduced in the newly adopted Labour Code and reducing the tax burden on investments to tightening rules for agricultural land purchase with disproportionate safeguards and new restrictions on the dairy sector.

Parliamentary parties are ranked by their voting patterns on these selected issues. One point is given to each parliamentary group for a vote in favour of a positive proposal or against a negative decision and a point is taken away for the opposite. In case an MP abstains from voting, a point is given for an abstention in a vote on a negative policy proposal and taken away in a vote on a positive one. No points are awarded in case of an absence. The overall point for each decision is calculated by dividing the number of points collected by the number of MPs in a political group. The final point is the sum of the points collected for the ten decisions, based on which all political groups are placed on a horizontal scale from -10 to 10, where -10 indicates stagnation and 10 indicates progress.

The overall standing is as follows:

• Labour Party Political Group (0)
• Order and Justice Political Group (+0.40)
• Liberals Movement Political Group (+4.0)
• Lithuanian Poles’ Electoral Action-Union of Christian Families Political Group (-2.4)
• Lithuanian Social Democratic Party Political Group (+0.2)
• Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrat Political Group (-1.3)
• “The Way of Courage” Political Group (-2.0)

The research results show that none of the Lithuanian parliamentary political parties have performed exceptionally in advancing the country’s economy and well-being.

Read the full publication (in Lithuanian) at http://www.llri.lt/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/5-zingsniai.pdf