Revista da EMERJ - V. 21 - N. 3 - Setembro/Dezembro - 2019 - Tomo 1

81  R. EMERJ, Rio de Janeiro, v. 21, n. 3, t. 1, p. 72-86, set.-dez., 2019  TOMO 1 First of all, changes in civil procedure are frequently included in “omnibus” statutes, no longer in specific (i.e. dedicated only to civil procedure) statutes. Such statutes normally introduce new regulations relating to a number of areas of the life of a business, e.g. starting a business, obtaining credit, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, resolving insolvency, etc. Most of these topics are included in the Doing Business report on the ease of doing business. Furthermore, such statutes are labelled with a kind of catch-all purpose, such as economic growth, development, and competitiveness. 33 Such statutory provisions are particularly apt to gain the attention of the Doing Business’ expert team in subsequent rounds of evaluation, promoting a country’s position in the global ranking. Regulation texts are drafted more than ever by government officials, with little exposure to debate and critique. Indeed, government officials frequently attend international meetings and participate in international networks, where the pressure generated by international and regional ranking is far stronger than in a domestic setting. Parliamentary control and ratification of governmental regulation is often carried out by the Industry or Trade Committees, where parliamentarians with a legal background are seldom present. Justice and Legal Affairs Committees, which are largely comprised of lawyers, play only a marginal role. This does not occur by chance, but reflects to some extent the main findings of the pilot study that triggered the Doing Business Project: “we find that […] formalism is systematically greater in civil than in common law countries, and is associated with higher expected duration of judicial proceedings, less consistency, less honesty, less fairness in judicial decisions, and more corruption”. 34 It comes as no surprise that governments in civil law countries, which are eager to please Doing Business reports, try to marginalize the lawyers’ role, particularly when they are civil procedure and litigation experts. A further feature of the recent Italian civil procedure legislation, which can best be explained as a consequence of the pressure exercised by the Doing Business Report, is the proliferation of new statutes in the 33 Cf. Law no. 80 of 2005, Law no. 69 of 2009, Law no. 99 of 2009, Law no. 27 of 2012, Law no. 92 of 2012, Law no. 134 of 2012, Law no. 98/2013, Law no. 162 of 2014. 34 Djankov/La Porta/Lopez-de-Silanes/Schleifer , op. cit. (Fn. 31), 453.