Title: Regulatory Impact Assessment in Greece
1Regulatory Impact Assessment in Greece
- Dr. P.Karkatsoulis
- Policy Advisor to the Ministry of Interior,
Public Administration and Decentralization,
Professor at the National School of Public
Administration
2The background of regulatory reform in Greece
- Several fragmented efforts on
- Simplification
- Codification
- Transposition
- Law drafting
- Intensive discussion inside and outside Greece
- OECD report (2001)
- EU policy on Better Regulation (2002)
3The size of the norm flow
- European Union
- EU-Aquis composed by 16.000 Directives covers
96.000 pages. - Greece
- 3430 Parliamentary laws in the last 30 years, 5
times more Presidential decrees authorized by the
law and 63 times more ministerial decisions.
4Main problems
- The main problems of the Greek regulatory system
were identified as - There are too many and very detailed regulations
in force - Provisions on the same issues are interspersed to
different regulations - The increasing production of regulations by the
administration
5Regulatory Inflation
6(No Transcript)
7Dispersed Horizontal Structure
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- For notification of the transposed aquis
- Ministry of Economics
- For the transposition of the aquis
- General Accounting Office
- For the impact on state budget
- Ministry of Interior
- For simplification and codification issues
- Central Committee for the preparation of
legislation - For technical suggestions on bills
- Council of the State
- Consulted for Presidential Decrees
- Parliament
8 Do we know the reasons why does it happen?
- Some basic assumptions
- The form of the state
- The existing legislative culture
- The welfare state
- Unexpected social events/periods of fast social
movements - International Organizations
- State intervention to economic transactions
9Crucial achievements
- One stop shops for citizens and businesses
- Sufficient infrastructure (e government)
- Pool of experts
10Lack of a regulatory reform strategy
- While the weaknesses of the legislative
instrumentarium are well known, the measures
taken were mostly conceived as ad hoc reactions. - The new IAs (energy, telecom, competition) have
been used as driving forces for the new era of
better regulation.
11The EU Better Regulation
- Mandelkern report
- It describes a comprehensive overall approach to
better regulation. - It recommends practices applicable to both
national governments and the European Commission.
- It also makes recommendations to the Institutions
of the EU - Commissions Action plan
- It launched a series of measures to review the
body of existing law. - The European IA
- It aims to improve the quality of the
Commission's policy proposals in terms of their
efficiency, effectiveness and coherency. - It identifies alternative policy options and
their likely positive and negative impacts, with
a particular focus on economic, environmental and
social effects, in line with the EU Sustainable
Development Strategy - The DEBR network
- The DEBR performs an advocacy role, promoting
best practices and initiating new thinking. - It promotes the exchange of national practices
- The DEBR is capable of adding value to the EU
level debate by staging a dialogue about issues
that are not on the official EU agenda yet.
12The legal framework for regulatory reform
- Following the OECD recommendations (2001) and the
EU priorities, Greece established an
inter-ministerial Committee to elaborate a new
framework for the improvement of regulation . - The ad hoc inter-ministerial legislative
Committee had to overcome a lot of obstacles,
misunderstandings and peculiarities. - The draft remained in queue more than two
years, until
13The legal framework for regulatory reform
- .The Prime Minister issued a circular on the
national regulatory policy and the quality and
effectiveness of regulations, on July 2006. - The circular was addressed to
- Ministers
- Deputy Ministers
- The Secretary General of the Government
- The Secretaries General of all Ministries
- The Secretaries General of the Regions
14The Prime Ministers circularThe procedures of
better law making
-
- Identify the problem to which the proposed
regulation is going to give a solution - Assess the impact of the regulation on
- the Economy (i.e. competitiveness, investment,
market, administrative burdens imposed on SMEs
etc) - Society (i.e. labour, gender mainstreaming,
health, persons with disabilities ) - The environment
- Alternative options to regulation should be
considered - Achieve a consensus through broad public
participation
15The Prime Ministers circularStructures
Supervised by the General Secretariat of the
Government
16The Prime Ministers circularPrinciples of
better regulation
17The Prime Ministers circularTools of better
regulation RIA
- According to the Prime Ministers circular
regulations should be checked against - Their impact on the economy
- Their impact on competitiveness
- The simplification of procedures
- Quality law drafting rules/Accessibility
- Codification
- Transposition
18Multi level government
- The criteria of better regulation should be
implemented in the case of - A new regulation
- A regulation which is going to be simplified
- A regulation which is going to be codified
- A regulation which transposes an EU directive
19The way forward
- Manual on the use of e RIA has been elaborated
- Specific Action plans requested from each
Ministry - Ex post Impact Assessment prepared for the end
of 2007 - All the Ministries have to have finished the RIA
implementation project by the end of 2007
20Thank you for your attention
- Dr. Panagiotis Karkatsoulis
- pkark_at_otenet.gr