The Constitution Committee yesterday (Thursday) approved for second and third readings the bill that automatically extends the validity of a variety of regulatory approvals. This is in continuation of the postponements given following the corona crisis at the end of June 2020 until the end of September 2021.
According to the approved mechanism: approvals valid for up to one year will be extended by three months; Certificates valid from one to three years will be extended by six months and certificates valid for three years or more will be extended by one year.
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The law actually refers to a “public authority” definition that includes the government, government ministries and their trust units, local authorities, public corporations or public committees.
Chairman of the Constitution Committee Yaakov Asher. Automatic extension Photo: Zvika Tischler The exemption is granted on a sweeping basis except in certain cases such as permits relating to the use and distribution of a natural resource, permits relating to the distribution of quotas, permits regulating a one-time operation, permits that vary considerably at any renewal date and cannot be technically or substantially extended, seasonal permits, permits A refresher course for maintaining the supervised service, certificates based on international obligations that limit their validity, and certificates for the renewal of which only a fee is required.
The new law also stipulates that the prime minister will be allowed to extend this period for additional periods of up to 6 months in an order, with the approval of the government and the relevant Knesset committee, due to exceptional economic circumstances and subject to an emergency due to the corona virus.
During the hearing, the committee’s chairman, Yaakov Asher, demanded that the same arrangement apply to nursing staff. Following this demand, the representative of the Population Authority said that “we agree that balances should be made and in the nursing industry an extension was made of three months to 31.3 for employees employed in nursing out of understanding the difficulty for the industry, so whoever expired during this period was extended to three months.”
Advocate David Yamin, the Prime Minister’s Office’s Regulatory Policy Spokesman, said at the hearing that “at the beginning of the Corona crisis that hit the world by surprise, the problem of economic functioning arose due to absenteeism, closed businesses and more. “They will be able to approve all the regulatory approvals – about 1,000 in a conservative estimate. We tried to create a cross-section so that not every regulator would reach the Knesset for specific regulations.”
Corona test. 1,000 regulatory approvals Photo: Shatterstock
According to Yemin, the first outline was in emergency regulations for a period of two months with an extension. “We enacted a temporary directive in the Knesset that stipulated a several-month arrangement in which each permit expired was extended by 3 months. “Chinese and not based on a mathematical algorithm and the balance point can be moved.”
Yemin clarified that there is a considerable amount of approvals that are renewed around January and this has created a burden for many of the regulators. “That’s why we allowed ministers to exclude specific types, and we kept the idea that a particular business could be excluded from the automatic extension,” he says. “In addition, a regulator working with licenses of over 3 years will not renew them all that year and when the corona ceases such a regulator is expected to suddenly face a double load of innovations. Therefore we allowed through the minister to pass the government and constitutional committee “To produce a balanced regulation. The law addresses all private and business regulatory approvals alike.”