International work
NNR is actively involved in regulatory improvement work both at EU level and within the OECD. At EU level, NNR sometimes acts independently, but often through BusinessEurope. NNR participates in BusinessEurope’s working group for regulatory improvement on a mandate from the Swedish Chamber of Commerce. In wider international contexts, NNR act both independently and through BIAC’s (Business t OECD’s) Governance and Regulatory Policy Committee via a mandate from Swedish Enterprise. NNR thereby participates in meetings of the OECD’s Regulatory Policy Committee and provides comments on its work.
Better regulation efforts in the EU
The European Commission is responsible for planning, preparing and proposing new EU legislation and policies. These efforts are based on the European Commission’s annual work programme.
Impact assessments must be produced by the Commission for laws and subordinate legislation (delegated and implementing acts). The first step is usually a so-called call for evidence (invitation to submit views) for a politically sensitive and/or important new or policy, an evaluaion of an existing law or policy or on a so-called fitness check of the effectiveness of a bundle of related existing laws and/or policies. The invitation describes the current problem to be tackled and objectives to be met. Furhermore, it explains why an EU initiative is needed and outlines policy options and descries the main features of the consultation srategy, including whether a public consultation with a questionnaire is needed.
The call for evidence combines two steps that were previously sequential: the roadmap/inception impact assessment and the questionnaire (where relevant). The European Commission’s Regulatory Scrutiny Board is the body that examines the quality of the European Commission’s impact assessments, evaluations and fitness checks. The impact assessments and the board’s opinion on this are published online once the European Commission has adopted the proposal.
During the regulatory process, the European Commission consult affected stakeholders. Guidelines and tools are available for such consultations. In addition to offering an opportunity to submit comments at an early stage via a call for evidence, the European Commission also holds public or targeted consultations. Evn when a regulatory proposal ha been decided pon by the Commission and forwarded to Parliament and the Council, Therre is an opportunity to submit comments on the proposal.
The opportunities for consultation are described in more detail on the European Commission website ‘Contribute to law-making’, which also contains a link to ‘Have your say’, a web page created by the European Commission to collect views on new EU policies and existing laws. The latter also contains a link to ‘Have your say: Simplify!’, a web page where citizens and businesses can suggest how to simplify and modernise existing EU legislation. To help simplify EU legislation and reduce unnecessary costs, the European Commission has established an expert advisory group, the Fit for Future Platform, consisting of a stakeholder group and a group for member states. This platform replaces the former REFIT platform.
The EU’s evaluation system is made up of systematic evaluations of individual rules combined with more extensive fitness checks of several interrelated laws or policies. Legislative proposals often contain a clause regarding the monitoring of the regulatory framework. In its guidelines on better regulation, the European Commission has also included an ‘evaluate first’ principle before new regulations are proposed. The Commission has furthermore, starting with its work program for 2022, introduced a one-in, one-out principle. This principle means that newly introduced burdens are to be offset by removing equivalent burdens in the same policy area.
The better regulation efforts are manifested in various parts of the EU decision-making process, which is shown in the following image:
Source: European Commission
Further details on the European Commission’s better regulation efforts and its goals for these efforts are available here on the European Commission website. Guidelines and tools for these efforts have been developed and are available here. The better regulation guidelines apply to all steps in the law-making process and set out the principles with which the European Commission should comply when preparing new initiatives and when managing and evaluating existing legislation.
An Interinstitutional agreement on better law-making (IIA) has been agreed by the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council regarding better regulation. According to the agreement, the European Council and the European Parliament will also make impact assessments of substantial amendments to the original proposal.
The European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS) has an impact assessment unit that reviews the European Commission’s impact assessments and offers the European Parliament committees to make impact assessments of any substantial amendments to the European Commission’s proposals.
To date, no impact assessments have been carried ut by the Coucil on proposals for significant amendments by the Council and very few by Parliament on proposals for significant ammendments by Parliament on the initial proposal from the Commission.
The NNR is actively striving to drive the development of the EU’s better regulation efforts and to contribute concrete improvements regarding EU legislation and associated procedures. NNR presents its views on the EU’s better regulation efforts and makes proposals on how these efforts can be further improved in the NNRs-agenda-for-the-EUs-work-on-better-regulation.pdf.
Jointly with its members and in its own capacity, the NNR also submits views on matters and EU legislative initiatives that are included in the platform’s annual work programme. These matters andlegislative initiatives are then subject to discussions and opinions of the platform.