Ex-ante impact assessment in surveyed parliaments

• Author: Anglmayer, Irmgard
• Pages: 13-31

EPRS | European Parli amentary Re searchService

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2.Ex-ante impact assessme nt in sur veyed parliaments

Key finding s

Ex-ante impact assessment can make an important contribution to evidence-based policy-

mak ing, as it s purpose is to info rm law-making through evidence. At the same time, an impact

assessment increases the legitimacy of aninitiative, since it justifies and substantiates the

rationale for action, explores different options for the course of action, and it provides reflection

on wh o will be af fected an d in what way. All EU Member States perform impact assessment to

unde rpin t heir le gislat ive init iatives, alb eit to varyin g degree s and with great differencesin f ocus

(e.g. simplification and burden reduction; cost-benefit o nly; integrated impact ass essment etc.)

International indices suggest that many EU countr ies have not y et reached their full potential

with regard t o ex-ante impact assessment (in particular: OECD, Better Regulation practices across

the EU; Bertelsmann Stiftung, Sustainable Governance Indicators 2019).

Some parliaments acro ss the EU have s tepped up t heir efforts to s crutinise their respective

governm ent’s impact assessment workin recent years, when deliberating at committee stage on

legislative propo sals prepared by the government. A few parliaments have taken this furt her and

also embedded impact assessment work into their legislative function. In this respect, they

conduct their own impact assessments, either related to legislative initiatives tabled by

parliament o r amendments, or, in a few cases, related t o government init iatives, t o inform the

legislative process in the sense of evidence-based policy-making. Therefore, parliamentary

impact ass essment touches upon th e two core powers of parliam ents: scrutiny and legislation.

Out of the 38 surveyed parliaments, 16 (15 EU-27 parliaments and 1 third-country

parliamen t) engag e in some f orm of ex-ante impact assess ment work, albeit in ver y different

ways and to greatly varying extent.

Out of these 16 parl iaments, 8 actively conduct their o wn impact assessm ents. These ar e:

7 EU-27 parliaments: Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Poland and

Sweden;

and 1 third-country parliament: Canada (budget estimates of proposals).

In addition, sevenfurther parliaments carry out smaller-scale impact assessment work, e.g. in-

depth scrutiny of government impact assessment (Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Lithuania,

Portugal and Spain). Finally, the Latvian Parliament avails of impact assessment capacities, but

has not yet tested them.

A total of 12 parli aments across the EU-27 and 10 of the surveyed third-country parli aments

indicat ed they do not engage in any specific ex-ante impact assessment wor k beyond

classical parliamentary scrutiny of the impactassessments accompanying government

proposals.

Bette r Regulation prac tices in natio nal parliaments

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2.1.Level of engagement in parliamentary impact assessment

Table 1 – EU-27 par liaments and the Europ ean Parliament: level of engagement in ex-ante

IA

COUNTRY

no IA work

beyond classical

commi ttee

scrutiny

smaller-scaleIA

work(e.g. i n-

depth scrutiny)

parliaments' own

IAwork

Austria

Belgium

Bulgaria

Croatia

Cyprus

Czechia

Denmark

Estonia

Finland

France

Germany

Greece

Hungary

Ireland

Italy

Latvia

Lithuania

Luxemburg

Malta

Netherlands

Poland

Portugal

Romania

Slovakia

Slovenia

Spain

Sweden

European Parliament