CADS10 Castellano. 2006 - Generalitat de Catalunya

The European strategy for improving regulation (European Governance: Better
Lawmaking –COM (2002) 275 end) establishes three basic areas for action in
regulatory matters:
a) simplifying and improving the regulatory context
b) promoting a culture of dialogue and participation
c) systematising the use of impact assessment within the European Commission.
In this sense, the European Union has adopted Impact Assessment as not only the
cornerstone of its framework for drafting legislation but also as a tool for achieving
more holistic implementation of the European Strategy for Sustainable Development
(communiqué of the Commission on 15th May 2001, COM (2001) 264). Impact
Assessment (hereinafter IA) is therefore at the junction between policies for improving
regulation and policies for sustainable development.
IA was introduced in 2002 by means of a communiqué of the Commission –COM
(2002) 276 end. According to the European Commission, this tool integrates and
replaces all partial impact assessments –business impact assessment, gender
assessment, environmental assessment, regulatory impact assessment, etc. –
covering the economic, environmental and social impacts in an integrated, balanced
manner using a single tool. In other words, the three pillars of sustainability. On the
European scale, there are plans for applying this tool to all the important initiatives
presented by the European Commission in its annual Labour Programme (regulatory
proposals, White Papers, etc.).
The Communiqué of the Commission proposes an IA built around two well-differentiated
phases: preliminary assessment and extended impact assessment. The internal
review process of the Commission regarding the development of RIA, however, has
resulted in changes to the IA method so that the new assessment guides –published
on 15th June 2005– no longer include the methodological separation into two
phases.
Indeed, the analysis of the results of the review resulted in the selection of a new
methodology based on the idea of a single "road map", considering the principle of
proportioned analysis (the higher the potential impact, the greater the analytic effort).
Thus, the new IA is based on a series of analytical steps that are very similar to those
of RIA, but taken from the point of view of sustainability.
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