18  •  Democratization 2015 ODIHR Legal Reviews in Brief: • Publication of 13 legal reviews, covering 8 countries (see full list in Annex); • Geographical focus: Central Asia (4 opinions) and Eastern Europe (6 opinions, including 3 for Ukraine); • Main human dimension issues covered: criminal justice and police reform, independence of the judiciary, constitutional reform, hate crimes, domestic violence, political party regulation and freedom of information; • Partnership and collaboration: Five opinions prepared and three assessment missions organized jointly with the Council of Europe and three opinions prepared and/or peer reviewed by other OSCE institutions — the OSCE Representative on Freedom of Media, the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities and the OSCE Strategic Police Matters Unit; and “ Our legislative framework already foresees the impact assessment of draft laws, and monitoring of legislation is also done in a number of cases. However, we do need to make these processes more systematic and useful, and I appreciate ODIHR’s support in these efforts.” David Usupashvili, Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, during a workshop organized jointly by ODIHR and the Parliament on proper impact assessment and monitoring of legislation • Follow-up: Ten follow-up events to discuss the legal opinions and recommendations issued in 2014 and 2015 with key stakeholders in requesting states. Some concrete results in 2015: • Following the Joint ODIHR-Venice Commission Opinion on the Draft Amendments to the Law on the Prosecutor’s Office of Georgia, completed in October 2015, the draft law was substantially amended to reflect the vast majority of ODIHR key recommendations, showing that ODIHR expertise had a very positive impact on the draft law; and • After the completion in March 2015 of the Joint ODIHR-Venice Commission Opinion on the Draft Law on the Prosecution Service of the Republic of Moldova, most recommendations were incorporated into a revised draft, which remains under discussion before the Parliament. ODIHR organized four workshops in Armenia, namely on policy-making and legislative planning, regulatory impact assessment, public consultations and the evaluation and monitoring of implementation of legislation. An initial workshop was also organized on 20 November 2015 in Georgia on regulatory impact assessment and evaluation and monitoring of legislation. During each workshop, participants developed concrete recommendations for future reform. ODIHR will facilitate the inclusion of all recommendations from the comprehensive assessment reports and follow-up workshops into national regulatory reform roadmaps – thus encouraging greater national ownership, responsiveness and responsibility in the process. A draft regulatory reform roadmap for Armenia will be finalized and launched in 2016, and similar documents will be developed and adopted in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. Guidelines for Legislators ODIHR assists participating States by preparing legislative guidelines that offer advice and expertise on how to legislate on often complex human dimension issues in compliance with international human rights standards and OSCE commitments. In March 2015, ODIHR released joint ODIHR-Venice Commission