Ex-ante impact assessment in surveyed parliaments

AuthorAnglmayer, Irmgard
Pages13-31
EPRS | European Parli amentary Re searchService
13
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
14
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

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