Thema: Fine-tune the toolkit - Enhance the role of impact assessment
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04/20/2009 15:51:06
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Webteam, Team
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Impact assessment is a central tool to evaluate costs and benefits of regulation at the drafting, legislative, implementation and review stage. Impact assessment is a relatively young tool in the European Union and has been used increasingly only since 2003. As such, the tool has not been systematically employed or fully developed. For example, impact assessments could help with a cost-benefit-analysis ex post, i.e. of existing regulation. Two problems stand out in the impact assessment procedure at European level. Firstly, impact assessments are time and resource intensive and the European Commission is yet to develop a refined, formalised system of selection and assessment methodology. Secondly, the quality control of the impact assessments is conducted by the Commission Impact Assessment Board (IAB), rather than an independent external evaluator. In general, it is desirable to develop a coherent, inter-institutional system of impact assessment for the European Union. It has, for example, been proposed to streamline impact assessment in the European Union into a multi-level policy cycle (see paper by Andrea Renda).
The respective wiki article that is referred to is found here.
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04/20/2009 15:51:59
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Webteam, Team
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Erik Akse answered Sep 10, 2008 11:26:
What is meant by: multi-level policy cycle? For me that phrase is not really adding clarity. 
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04/20/2009 15:52:32
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Webteam, Team
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Maximilian Freier answered Sep 15, 2008 10:21:
Dear Erik, Andrea proposes a 'multi-level policy cycle' in his paper. I have included a link to this paper in the text.
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04/20/2009 16:04:50
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Webteam, Team
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Erik Akse answered Sep 17, 2008 14:37:
First of all, I liked reading the research paper a lot. Many issues are relevant and good to discuss about.
But of course, I can not do without commenting or supplementing on several of the raised issues. For the sake of readability, I focus on the issue of enhancing the use of the SCM.
Broader, 100% use of SCM
Personally said, it sounds very plausible and reasonable to implement the SCM in a broader way in the EU. It would be good to accompany every binding Commission proposal with a calculation of admin burdens. This will of course create some additional work for the DGs, but even more so for the coordination of the admin burden reduction exercise.
If the EC does not draw up an IA for a proposal, it is - simply said - because it is a relatively confined proposal in terms of impact. That means that it should also not be too hard to broadly assess the effects on administrative burdens. Even when specific statistics of e.g. number of affected companies is not known, one can always indicate what the effect would more or less be for one company.
Once a proposal has been adopted by the EC and is send to Council and Parliament, the best case scenario would be that for every amendment it is at least indicated what kind of affect it would have in general and in specific on admin burden: positive, negative or neutral. The Commission could send in a reaction on that issue in the general reactions given on amendments. (It would allow the EC of course also to indicate what benefits the amendment has.)
Responsibilities of Member States
In following a proposal after adoption and concerning the analysis of the actual effect of the admin burdens, MS have an extremely important role. There are already report cycles in place about implementation of directives, Better Regulation activities etc. Adding a chapter on reporting the admin burdens caused by the legislation, should not be too much additional work for the countries that have themselves measurements in place. Since they in general always work with a reduction target, they would be interested in calculating the precise admin burdens anyway.
This would not only lead to a better understanding of the effects of legislation in the different MS, it would also provide detailed insight into the way legislation is implemented. Reporting back on the admin burdens (including the information on law name, article etc) could than replace the obligation to report on (part of) the implementation process.
Since the admin burden figures are open to the public, the information provided on the admin burden in the implementation process can provide the basis for exchange of 'best implementation practices' during the implementation process. This would benefit companies and citizens, since legislation would be admin burden 'light', the MS would have a better understanding of what to implement and the EC would have better understanding about what happens after adoption of a proposal by the EU. (This might in itself decrease infringement cases, need for additional research - and its costs - etc etc )
The SCM could in that sense be the driver of coordination and discussion between MS and EU in the implementation process. It would also provide the means to discuss quick changes to legislation (before it is in place) when it becomes clear that it might cause completely unnecessary burdens. And it would provide pivotal data for the evaluation of legislation later on. From these three points of view it would be more than interesting to invest into it.
Avoid data fetishism
It all sounds very nice, but there is the big risk of too much focus on the process. The admin burden figures should provide enough insight about what is happening (or might happen). The problem that is most likely to occur is that people blind stare at the numbers and their validity.
Just imagine a case where the EC is preparing a proposal where no admin burden figures are available. The question is, how detailed should the first analysis of a proposal be; a proposal that can still be amended by Council and Parliament.
In the case there is an IA, admin burden figures would be easier to obtain than when there is none. And if the proposal is in the field where a measurement has taken place, it should be not hard at all to assess the effect on admin burden.
It comes down to the question: how much time do you feel like investing in the process? Do you need to apply the SCM everywhere or can there be a 'light' version?
One could do a measurement of all EU IOs, which would cost a lot.
One could also draw up a list of all EU IOs and fill in the admin burden numbers when legislation is up for review/evaluation or change. In the meantime, MS that have finished their measurement could fill in their number. And one could wait with the final approval of the numbers after MS have send in their calculations.
One has to be very careful and make sure that the SCM is integrated in the present reporting structure between EC and MS. The SCM might ease the work for civil servants in a different way as it does for citizens and companies.
Coordination will be the bottleneck
How to organize this all? The answer will not be easy to find. Coordinating the exchange of data, validating it, chasing people to work on it etc etc is terribly time consuming. Therefore it is even more important that using the SCM in the information exchange between EC and MS should be integrated into present reporting structures. Otherwise it will be an additional reporting requirement that does not make life easier.
I do not have the answer just like that. I do not feel like I know now already the reporting streams between EC and MS well enough to present the perfect solution.
But as far as I know, there are 17 MS that have put into place a reduction target for admin burden. All of these have a vested interest to cooperate with the EU on this issue. That might just do the trick of setting up a community of officials working on admin burden that would exchange admin burden data. It might also provide the momentum to better report on admin burden, integrate the SCM into present reporting structures without just adding a new level.
Happy to discuss!
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