Comparing the content of regulatory impact assessments in the UK and the EU

Abstract

This paper examines the content of impact assessments (IAs) in the European Commission (EC) and the UK for the period 2005 to 2010. We coded 477 IAs for the UK and 296 for the EC, using a detailed scorecard. The findings suggest that IA is not a perfunctory activity in the European Union and the UK. The breadth of consultation and economic analysis has improved steadily across the years, arguably as a result of learning and regulatory oversight. The UK and the EC are strikingly similar on a number of dimensions (such as economic analysis and identification of costs and benefits). However, the IAs of the EC seem to pay more attention to social and environmental dimensions. The conclusions reflect on the implications of the authors' findings for current policy discussions concerning regulatory quality and the role of regulatory oversight bodies.

Keywords:

• EU
• impact assessment
• regulation
• regulatory oversight
• UK

Acknowledgments

This paper is based on research carried out with the support of the European Research Council (ERC) grant on Analysis of Learning in Regulatory Governance (ALREG), directed by Claudio M. Radaelli (http://centres.exeter.ac.uk/ceg/research/ALREG/index.php). Oliver Fritsch and Claudio M. Radaelli gratefully acknowledge the support of the ERC. The authors would like to thank Giacomo Luchetta for his extensive input during the scoring phase. We are grateful to Jan Pieter Beetz, Sarah Cooper, Valeria Cotovan, Samuele Dossi, Theofanis Exadaktylos, Anaid Flesken, Mattia Gallotti, Stuart Ingham, Jonathan Kamkhaji, Consuelo Pacchioli, Can Selçuki, Gabriel Thebolt and Siim Trumm for research assistance, and two anonymous referees and the journal editors for their insightful comments.

Notes

*UK IA documents are based on templates that include several tick-the-box items, such as ‘has no effect on race equality’. In those cases, we only assigned ‘yes’/1-values (indicating the presence of a specific scorecard item in an IA) if the author provided sufficient qualitative or quantitative evidence that such a test had really been carried out or if the author gave a plausible reason why such a test would be irrelevant in the respective policy context. Absent this evidence, we assigned a ‘no’/0-value, indicating that the scorecard item was actually missing in the IA.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Oliver Fritsch

Oliver Fritsch is an academic research fellow in environmental politics in the School of Geography, University of Leeds, UK.

Claudio M. Radaelli

Claudio M. Radaelli is a professor of political science in the Department of Politics, University of Exeter, UK.

Lorna Schrefler

Lorna Schrefler is a research fellow in the Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels, Belgium.

Andrea Renda

Andrea Renda is a senior research fellow in the Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels, Belgium.