3 Evaluation of EU legislation
| (35347)
13921/13
COM(13) 686
| Commission Communication: Strengthening the foundations of Smart Regulation — improving evaluation
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| Legal base | —
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| Document originated | 2 October 2013
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| Deposited in Parliament | 7 October 2013
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| Department | Business, Innovation and Skills
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| Basis of consideration | EM dated 18 October 2013
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| Previous Committee Report | None, but see footnote
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| Discussion in Council | No date set
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| Committee's assessment | Politically important
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| Committee's decision | For debate in European Committee C
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Background
3.1 According to the Commission, it has developed
its Smart Regulation policy in response to the need to continually
improve and strengthen governance, where evaluation has been a
key tool in helping it to assess whether EU actions are delivering
the expected results and ultimately improving conditions for European
citizens and businesses. It recalls that, in its Communication[6]
in December 2012 on Regulatory Fitness, it reiterated its commitment
to making the identification of unnecessary costs and areas for
performance improvement an integral part of its policy-making
across all EU legislation, adding that better evaluation practices
will play a crucial role in this respect.
The current document
3.2 In this Communication, the Commission says its
aim is to bring its system for evaluations — defined as
"a critical, evidence-based judgement of whether an intervention
has met the needs it aimed to satisfy and actually achieved its
expected effects" — up to date with recent developments
in EU Smart Regulation policy, and in particular the Regulatory
Fitness ("REFIT") programme.
3.3 It begins by explaining the evaluation arrangements
already in place for regulatory and other policy action, which
it says are more varied than those for spending programmes, with
individual Directorates General (DGs) being responsible for their
own evaluations (the vast majority of which are outsourced to
independent consultants and followed by steering groups within
the DG).
3.4 The Commission says its reasons for seeking to
improve the present evaluation system are in order to:
· Embed an "evaluate first"
culture and improve quality, noting that evaluations are not
always conducted before policy changes are proposed, and are not
sufficiently integrated into Impact Assessments; that some do
not focus sufficiently on the disadvantages of EU action, or on
whether changes can be attributed to EU action; and that they
are also not always supported by sufficient data and stakeholder
opinion.
· Update and improve the consistency
of approach, where it suggests that practices in different
DGs are inconsistent, and that better planning and more transparency
are needed, in particular because the lack of advance notice makes
it difficult for stakeholders to provide input. It also notes
the difficulty of deciding when to conduct an evaluation.
· Provide quality assurance and quality
assessment, noting that there is currently no set quality
assurance process, and that the required quality assessment report
is not always published.
3.5 The Communication then sets out the reforms which
the Commission intends to pursue in order to increase transparency,
efficiency, learning and accountability; improve stakeholder participation
in the process; and integrate evaluations into the decision making
process more effectively. These include:
Improving consistency and clarity
The Commission intends to issue clear guidelines,
providing a common definition and process for evaluations across
DGs.
Planning
The Commission says that the planning process should
be standardised with rolling five-year plans of evaluations and
fitness checks made publicly available, with policy and programme
DGs carrying out at least one evaluation or fitness check each
year, and with there being better consideration of the appropriate
time for an evaluation, given the availability of data and the
expected schedule of the decision-making process. It proposes
that project plans should be published centrally, early in the
process, outlining the nature, scope and expected finish date,
with the Terms of Reference for external contractors and (when
completed) the final report of the evaluation also being published
centrally.
Getting the design right
In order to deliver more relevant, robust and rigorous
evaluations, the Commission intends to identify causality, rather
than simply what happened, with its evaluations addressing (or
justifying why they do not address) the following criteria:
· Effectiveness: have objectives been met?
· Efficiency: were the costs incurred reasonable?
· Coherence: does the policy complement
other EU actions?
· Relevance: is EU action still necessary?
· EU added value: could similar changes
have been achieved by national or regional action?
Scrutiny mechanisms
The Commission proposes that the oversight role of
steering groups should be strengthened, and that they should complete
and publish Quality Assessments of each evaluation. In addition,
it intends to continue to expand the use of "Fitness Checks"
(comprehensive policy evaluations which cover more than one piece
of legislation), emphasising also the importance of taking joint
responsibility with the Member States and the other EU Institutions.
The Government's view
3.6 In his Explanatory Memorandum of 18 October 2013,
the Minister of State for Business and Energy (Michael Fallon)
says that the Government welcomes the Commission's intention of
improving its evaluation procedures, and notes that, along with
12 other Member States, the UK pressed it to conduct more reviews
of EU legislation in the November 2012 Ten point plan for EU
Smart Regulation. He adds that it is particularly important
to have the right guidelines in place at European level so that
REFIT evaluations can identify opportunities to reduce regulatory
burdens on businesses.
3.7 The Minister welcomes the importance attached
to the "evaluate first" principle, since he believes
that all significant new or revised legislation should be based
on an evaluation of what is already in place. He also welcomes
a number of commitments in the Communication which address previous
requests by the Government, such as assessing the relevance and
added value of action at the EU level in all evaluations as a
means of considering whether continued intervention is necessary;
its commitment to publish more information on its evaluation plans;
and its commitment to publish responses to evaluations written
by external contractors.
3.8 The Minister says that the Government intends
to respond to the consultation which the Commission plans to undertake
shortly on its evaluation guidelines, and will consult other relevant
stakeholders, including businesses, in developing its response.
Conclusion
3.9 Clearly, a robust evaluation process is an
integral part of successful policy making at all levels of governance,
and we have from time to time reported previous documents produced
by the Commission on this subject. This latest Communication examines
ways in which the present system might be improved, and we think
this would be a timely moment for the House to consider some of
the issues to which it gives rise. We are, therefore, recommending
the document for debate in European Committee C, along with a
further Commission Communication[7]
on EU Regulatory Fitness.
6 (34557) 17784/12: see HC 86-xxvii (2012-13), chapter
7 (16 January 2013). Back
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(35346) 13290/13: see chapter 2 of this Report Back
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