(Regulatory) Impact AssessmentIntroduction

Zsombor Kovacsy, Ministry of Justice Hungary

Regional Strategic Workshop on Impact AssessmentRiga, Latvia 2-4 February, 2005

Organized by Open Society Institute and UNDP

Initial questions

When to legislate?Who decides on the directions of

influencing social and economic processes?

How to predict the consequences of regulation?

How to prevent the side effects of regulation?

„Better Regulation”

Impact AssessmentConsultationReduction of administrative burdensTechnical simplification of law

The aim of RIA – towards better regulation

Improvement of the decision making capacity

Improvement of the effectiveness of law

Enabling law simplification

Our definition on RIA

The Regulatory Impact Assessment/Analysis is an information collecting and analyzing process, the purpose of which is the improvement of the effectiveness of legal norms, by analyzing the short and long term social, economic and other impacts of law under preparation or already in force, to the degree justified by the nature of the regulation, helping the better decision making with the summarization of the results.

RIA situations

Ex-ante Ex-post Choosing the adequate tool of

regulationAnalysis of practical problemes

Problems of law application and their possible solutions

Lack of legal information

Natural consequen-ces of intention

MisuseLow quality of

application

Origin

Sharing infirmation

Education

HR conse-quences

Civil and penal

responsibi-lity

Supervision of regulation

Solution

Problems of text

Armory of RIA

StatisticsEconomicsSociology State and legal studiesEnvironmental sciencesHealth sciences…

How to perform RIAs?

The „think-real approach”PrinciplesThe double IA chain

The process of RIA

Professional activities Learning the lawmaker’s intention Selection of the rules to be analyzed Selection the impacts to be analyzed Execution of the analyses Presentation of the results

Project management activities Planning of the project Co-ordination of RIA activities Closure of the project

The impacts

The impacts of a regulation are much more than purely the intended effects themselves. There are lots of indirect consequences, as well.

Evaluation of the starting point – similar situation in several countries

Continental type legislative systemPolitical decision making traditionsEducation of civil servants

The Regulatory Impact Assessment

Is not an opposition of governmental initiatives

Is not a useless sophistication of legislative preparation

Provides scientifically based information in order to enable the politicians to make effective decisions.

Institutional requirements of the RIA

Educated personnelPolitical willReal opportunity for the application within

the policy cycle (timeframes, deadlines etc.)

Main tasks for the elaboration of an RIA framework

Preparation of a methodological guidelineLegislative prescriptionTraining for the legislatorsCreation of the institutional backgroundOngoing quality improvement

Some international experiences

Technical prescription can turn into substantial quality improvement.

Strong political will is necessary.There are extremely similar problems

emerging in different countries.The professional independence of IA

analysts is an important factor of success.