Home
Download
***********************************************************************************************************************************************
The large majority of European governments and the institutions
of the European Union have undertaken initiatives to assess the
potential impacts of their proposed policies and regulations. The
process of Impact Assessment (IA) aims to improve the effectiveness
and efficiency of regulation by providing policy makers with
information on likely costs and benefits, stimulating early
interdepartmental coordination, and promoting the involvement of the
stakeholders. The objective is to enable decision-makers to choose
the policy option with the greatest benefits at lowest costs,
broadly defined. When first introduced, Impact Assessment procedures
focused on the economic impacts of regulations. Later on, a number
of countries developed other procedures to assess impacts on a wider
range of issues such as the environment, social issues, gender,
small and medium sized enterprises
These various approaches have been applied with different degrees
of rigour and success. To achieve additional momentum, efforts have
been made in recent years to establish new forms of integrated IA
that allow a comprehensive assessment of all possible impacts of new
legislation – economic, social and environmental - including
unintended side effects and the assessment of inter-linkages between
these different issues of concern. The integration of the different
IA procedures aims to improve the quality of regulation, to avoid
possible adverse effects on competitiveness and to strengthen the
implementation of sustainable development.
IA procedures vary from country to country regarding the level of
institutionalisation, the scope of analysis, the consideration of
alternative policy instruments, and the choice of methodological
approaches. So far, there has been no comprehensive study that looks
at the actual effects of IA on policy outputs - including whether
integrated IA actually leads to the mainstreaming of formerly
marginal objectives or whether it creates a bias towards certain
types of impacts. EVIA will substantially advance our knowledge
about the overall practice of integrated IA across Europe and more
specifically about its actual effects, quality standards and
institutional practices. The two-year research project (February
2006 to January 2008) will make a significant contribution to
current academic debates, while at the same time delivering
operational standards of good practice for performing and evaluating
integrated Impact Assessment.
Key research questions
EVIA will address the following key research questions:
- How can the concept of 'quality of IA' be defined and
appraised?
- How can we measure the impact of IA on the beliefs of
regulators, the perceptions of the stakeholders, and the policy
outputs?
- How is the effectiveness of IA affected by the nature of the
regulatory system, the type of policy problems, the use of
alternative policy instruments, and the networks of stakeholders
involved in 'better regulation' policies?
- To what extend are regulators and stakeholders familiar with
and seek to employ different quantitative methods and tools and
what has been their experience in practice?
- Can we identify good practices in using these methods and
tools, and what criteria should we use to select them?
EVIA will mainly draw on comparative case studies and surveys of
practitioners to evaluate IA systems. Case studies will be selected
from IAs that have been conducted by the European Commission between
2003 and 2005, and from recent IAs in the EU Member States and other
countries. These will include countries that have a long experience
in IA, as well as those that have recently introduced IA systems or
revised them.
Workplan
The objectives of the project will be achieved in four work
packages:
- WP1: Developing a Framework of Analysis. A comprehensive survey of
the full set of IAs undertaken at EU and national levels will be
carried out based on a review of the literature and relevant policy
documents. This will form the basis of a typology of IAs and inform
the development of indicators to measure the quality and outcomes of
IA. The survey will also underpin the development of a
semi-structured questionnaire for the case studies.
- WP2: Case Studies and the European Observatory on Impact
Assessment. Selected case studies will be used to assess how the
outcome of IAs is affected by different types of regulation, the
overall institutional setting, and the methods and tools that have
been employed. In addition, a comprehensive database - the European
Observatory on Impact Assessment - will be set up and made available
via a web site.
- WP3: Practitioner Survey. Based on the results of the case studies,
a survey of IA practitioners will be conducted to further refine the
success conditions for effective IA and place them on a broad
empirical basis. Officials and units responsible for the conduct of
IA, as well as other stakeholders such as business representatives
and NGOs, will be surveyed.
- WP4: Integration and Dissemination. An expert advisory board will
be set up at the beginning of the project to help steer the research
and comment on project outputs. Workshops will be organised to
discuss the identified good practices against the background of the
needs and possibilities of the policy-making process.
Key Outputs
Principal outputs from EVIA will include:
- a database of institutions for IA - the European Observatory on
Impact Assessment
- a comparative analysis of approaches to IA
- a report on good practices for IA
- two Workshops and their associated reports
- a handbook of Impact Assessment including an overview of recent
developments and the rules and standards for good practice in
integrated impact assessment
Papers produced within the project will reflect the needs of
different target groups: scientific discussion papers will be
written for peer reviewed journals, while more practical policy
papers will be produced for officers in charge of IA.
|
|
home |