A simple demand

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A simple demand smarter regulation

• Stephen White
• European Commission

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Smart regulation
Improving legislation at all stages of the
policy cycle
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Smart Regulation
8 October 2010, COM(2010) 543

• is about the whole policy cycle
• must remain a shared responsibility of
• the European institutions and of Member States
• is about strengthening the voice of
• citizens and other stakeholders

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Looking forward Impact Assessment
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The Rationale behind Impact Assessment

• Make better proposals
• Changed two-thirds of our proposals, often
  significantly
• Promote coherence consider social, economic and
  environmental impacts
• Transparent and open decision making
• Show consideration given to a proposal

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Common sense questions

• Was right procedure followed incl stakeholder
  consultation?
• What is the problem? ? Evaluation as input
• What are the objectives?
• What policy options exist?
• What are the impacts and trade-offs?
• Future monitoring and evaluation?

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What is Impact Assessment?

• Not a substitute for political judgement!
• One system, applied to all Commission proposals
• 600 or so available on the web
• Never fully quantified
• Takes time and money to do properly

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The final product

• Commission Staff Working Paper so only translate
  Executive Summary (no more than 30 pages)

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Impact Assessment Board

• Launched by President Baroso on 14 November 2006
•  Independent body  to ensure good quality of
  the Commission impact assessments
• No escape examines them all
• Resubmission rate of around 40
• Stops a proposal going ahead until passed
• Quality bar increasing over time

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Outside the Commission

• The Inter Institutional Agreement
• European Parliament and Council will assess the
  impact of substantial amendments (eg Batteries
  amendment)
• The three institutions agreed common approach to
  impact assessment
• Member States
• For many, analysis is not systematic or
  transparent

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What makes it work

• Quality check
• Commitment (not voluntary turkeys dont vote
  for Christmas)
• Start early
• External scrutiny
• Integrated (economic, environmental, social)
• Support and advice throughout
• Resource-intensive, but the best way to get a
  good process and product and to influence
  decisions
• Good evidence base as to what has worked and what
  the problems are

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Looking back Evaluation
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Evaluation a political priority
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Reinforcing the use of evaluation

• Evaluation, what and why ?
• Evaluation is the main tool used by the
  Commission to assess the extent to which EU
• interventions reach the set policy objectives
  and how their performance can be
• improved in the future. Well-conducted
  evaluations can help improving the relevance,
  
• effectiveness and cost- effectiveness of public
  interventions and evaluation can
• increase the transparency and accountability
  concerning EU expenditure.
• Communication SEC(2007)213 of 21.2.2007.
  Responding to Strategic Needs
• Reinforcing the use of evaluation

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Evaluation to support new initiatives

• New significant initiatives should be based on an
  evaluation of the policy framework in place
• Evaluation should be covered extensively in the
  roadmaps
• Flag all relevant evaluative material in support
  of your initiative
• Evaluation aspects are an important factor in
  SG-DG bilateral meetings
• Evaluation forms the basis for the Impact
  Assessment (IA)
• IAs have a section on future evaluation
  arrangements

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Evaluation in figures 2010
Number of ex-post evaluations finalised?
113
Percentage of outsourced evaluations?
80
200 000 euro
Average cost of an external evaluation ?
19 million euro
Total cost for all external evaluations?
Average duration for a retrospective evaluation?
14 months
Total number of evaluations completed so far
over 1300!
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Fitness checks pilots

• Employment and social affairs
• Information and consultation of workers
• Enterprise
• Agro-food industry
• Environment
• Protection of EU freshwater resources
• Transport
• Internal market for aviation

Delivery 2012
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Complementary approach
Fitness checks of entire policy sectors
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What makes it work

• A demand exists
• Moving from programmes to policies
• A good evidence base from the Member States

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Not just Commission internally

• Promoting assessment
• Environmental Impact Assessment Directive
• Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive
• Aarhus Directive
• Within policies, for example
• Socio-economic analysis in REACH
• River Basin Management Plans
• Environmental Liability Directive assess damage

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Key links

• Evaluation on Europa http//ec.europa.eu/dgs/secr
  etariat_general/evaluation/index_en.htm
• Better regulation http//ec.europa.eu/governance/
  better_regulation/index_en.htm
• Impact Assessment on Europa
• http//ec.europa.eu/governance/impact/index_en.ht
  m
• Smart Regulation Communication
• http//ec.europa.eu/governance/better_regulation/
  documents/com_2010_0543_en.pdf