The development of RIA in the European Union: an overview

The European Commission has successfully managed to adopt and implement ex ante impact assessment procedures since 2003, and available data show that the IA documented are of increasingly good quality. Even though margins for improving the European Commission IA system persist, other EU institutions and almost all EU member states significantly lag behind in terms of IA implementation. The experience of past research projects, including the European Network for Better Regulation and the recent OECD EU15 project confirmed that at national level IA features a high adoption-implementation gap. This paper draws on EU and international experience to draw some recommendations, which include the need for more sophisticated legal and economic analysis in RIA, to make it a more credible instrument for ex ante policy appraisal; and the need for gradually introduced, carefully designed RIA system which take advantage of the enormous success obtained by other, simpler models, such as the Standard Cost Model for the measurement and reduction of administrative burdens.