Regulatory Quality In Europe

The European Union and its member states are investing in ambitious programmes for 'better regulation' and targets of regulatory quality. This book lifts the veil of excessively optimistic propositions covering the whole better regulation agenda. It provides an innovative conceptual framework to handle the political complexity of regulatory governance. It approaches better regulation as an emerging public policy, with its own political context, actors, problems, rules of interaction, instruments, activities and impacts.

Laws and regulations affect the daily lives of businesses and citizens. It is important that they are designed in a way that takes account of their social, environmental and business impacts and ensures they remain relevant in today’s fast-changing context. The second edition of the Better Regulation Practices across the European Union report analyses recent developments and current practices for improving the quality of laws and regulations across all 27 EU Member States and the European Union.

Throughout the book the authors aim to show how the market can function more efficiently and offer policy recommendations to show how regulatory reform can improve competitiveness at the firm level as well as performance at the industry, national and EU levels.

Laws and regulations affect the daily lives of businesses and citizens. High-quality laws promote national welfare and growth, while badly designed laws hinder growth, harm the environment and put the health of citizens at risk. This report analyses practices to improve the quality of laws ...

This paper examines the quality of impact assessments in the European Commission and the United Kingdom for the period 2005-2010. We coded 477 impact assessments for the UK and 251 for the European Commission, using a detailed scorecard - adjusted to reduce the bias evidenced by previous usages of this instrument. The findings suggest that impact assessment is not merely a perfunctory activity in the European Union and the UK. Quality has improved steadily over the years, arguably as a result of learning and regulatory oversight. The UK and the European Commission are strikingly similar on a number of impact assessment dimensions (such as economic analysis and identification of costs and benefits). The impact assessments of the European Commission seem to pay more attention to social and environmental aspects, however. The conclusions reflect on the implications of our findings for current policy discussions on regulatory quality and the role of regulatory oversight bodies.

This report maps and analyses the core issues which together make up effective regulatory management for Denmark, laying down a framework of what should be driving regulatory policy and reform in the future.

This report maps and analyses the core issues which together make up effective regulatory management for Belgium, laying down a framework of what should be driving regulatory policy and reform in the future.

This report encourages governments to “think big” about the relevance of regulatory policy and assesses the recent efforts of OECD countries to develop and deepen regulatory policy and governance.