1. (Regulatory) Impact Assessment Introduction Zsombor Kovacsy, Ministry of Justice Hungary Regional Strategic Workshop on Impact Assessment Riga, Latvia 2-4 February, 2005 Organized by Open Society Institute and UNDP

2. Initial questions When to legislate? Who decides on the directions of influencing social and economic processes? How to predict the consequences of regulation? How to prevent the side effects of regulation?

3. „Better Regulation” Impact Assessment Consultation Reduction of administrative burdens Technical simplification of law

4. The aim of RIA – towards better regulation Improvement of the decision making capacity Improvement of the effectiveness of law Enabling law simplification

5. Our definition on RIA The Regulatory Impact Assessment/Analysis is an information collecting and analyzing process, the purpose of which is the improvement of the effectiveness of legal norms, by analyzing the short and long term social, economic and other impacts of law under preparation or already in force, to the degree justified by the nature of the regulation, helping the better decision making with the summarization of the results.

6. RIA situations Ex-ante Ex-post Choosing the adequate tool of regulation Analysis of practical problemes

7. Problems of law application and their possible solutions Lack of legal information Natural consequen- ces of intention MisuseLow quality of application Origin Sharing infirmation Education HR conse- quences Civil and penal responsibi- lity Supervision of regulation Solution Problems of text

8. Armory of RIA Statistics Economics Sociology State and legal studies Environmental sciences Health sciences …

9. How to perform RIAs? The „think-real approach” Principles The double IA chain

10. The process of RIA Professional activities  Learning the lawmaker’s intention  Selection of the rules to be analyzed  Selection the impacts to be analyzed  Execution of the analyses  Presentation of the results Project management activities  Planning of the project  Co-ordination of RIA activities  Closure of the project

11. The impacts The impacts of a regulation are much more than purely the intended effects themselves. There are lots of indirect consequences, as well.

12. Evaluation of the starting point – similar situation in several countries Continental type legislative system Political decision making traditions Education of civil servants

13. The Regulatory Impact Assessment Is not an opposition of governmental initiatives Is not a useless sophistication of legislative preparation Provides scientifically based information in order to enable the politicians to make effective decisions.

14. Institutional requirements of the RIA Educated personnel Political will Real opportunity for the application within the policy cycle (timeframes, deadlines etc.)

15. Main tasks for the elaboration of an RIA framework Preparation of a methodological guideline Legislative prescription Training for the legislators Creation of the institutional background Ongoing quality improvement

16. Some international experiences Technical prescription can turn into substantial quality improvement. Strong political will is necessary. There are extremely similar problems emerging in different countries. The professional independence of IA analysts is an important factor of success.