Process to Create Laws in Costa Rica

Each country has its own laws, that is a fact, and they are the rules that citizens must follow in order to live in a healthy and safe society, actually one of the most important concepts in a society, if not the most important. In each country, the steps to enact a law are different, so let’s talk about the process that takes to enact a law in Costa Rica.

Every law in Costa Rica begins as a project which has to be submitted to the Legislative Assembly, the Legislators will be in charge of studying the project presented and analyzing its scope to see if it is possible within our regulations. They (Legislative Assembly) operate annually, and the calendar and sessions are divided into two types of sessions which are ordinary and extraordinary sessions, ordinary sessions occur in two different phases that cover a period that goes from May 1st to July 31st and from September 1st to November 30th while the extraordinary sessions go from December 1st to April 30th. It is important to clarify that for the Legislative Assembly to hold extraordinary sessions, it must be convened by the Executive Branch.

According to our regulations there are three ways by which a bill can become law, these can be reflected in article 105 of the political constitution in which it mentions that the bills may be presented by the citizens through a referendum, for this to be possible it must be supported by at least 5% of the electoral register, this same article mentions that the bill will also be valid and studied while it is presented by 1 or more Legislators and if there is approval of 2 thirds of the votes in the Legislative Assembly and finally a bill may be approved when it has been presented by the Executive Branch, and it has been approved by an absolute majority vote.

In accordance with our regulations and the statutes of the Legislative Assembly, article 113 of the Legislative Assembly’s regulations establishes that every bill must be presented to the secretary of the parliamentary directory and this must be signed by one or more Legislators who have accepted this bill.

Once these projects are presented, the assembly distributes them to different commissions made up of the Legislators who are in charge of studying these projects, in order to be able to analyze their scope and to be able to take them to a vote for their due approval.

For this, our assembly has created two types of commissions, the ordinary permanent commissions and the special permanent commissions, each of these commissions has the purpose of studying the bills on specific issues, these commissions according to their classification are:

There are 2 types of additional special commissions that are the special investigation commissions and the mixed special commissions, these are commissions that may be created if the assembly considers it necessary for specific acts in order to be able to fulfill a mission or with the purpose of its creation.

Once the bill is presented in order to become a law, it must be approved in two different debates, these debates cannot be on the same day, and we see this reflected in article 124 of our political constitution which establishes that “To become law every project must be the subject of two debates, each one on a different non-consecutive day, obtain the approval of the Legislative Assembly and the sanction of the Executive Power; in addition, it must be published in La Gaceta (official newspaper), without prejudice to the requirements that this Constitution establishes both for special cases and for those resolved by popular initiative and referendum”.

For a project to be evaluated in a second debate, the one that was initially approved is taken as a reference, the second debates have priority over the first ones, since these are dedicated to a final analysis of the project, Legislators can provide their opinion regarding this for no more than 15 minutes, in the same way during the second one they can present motions to modify this project that is about to become law in its form, but not in its substance, this due to the fact that it was already approved in the first debate.

Once the project is approved in the second debate and has already been signed by the President and Secretary of the Assembly, this project is sent to the executive management, which will send the legislative decree to the executive branch. The executive branch has 10 business days from when they receive it to veto or sanction it, after these 10 days if they did not exercise this right then they must publish it (the law). Once it is published, then it is officially a law.

This issue is of the utmost importance and is of great interest because it will help us to better understand the path that each project follows to become a law, what needs to happen and who is in charge of voting and approving it. We try to make it easy to follow for everyone, please let us know in the comments if you have any question remember that we are here to help.