Nov 2023 – A report PS4SD made for WWF Europe on two aspects of the 2021 revision of the European Commission’s Impact Assessment (IA) guidelines and tools shows some reason for concern. The consistency with EU Climate Law and the do-no-significant-harm principle was found not to be well implemented. In 11 out of the 20 reviewed IAs, the overview on relevant SDGs was missing in the Annexes of the respective IA reports.
On 6 November 2023 the OECD published a report on Better regulation for the green transition. Climate change and other environmental threats require urgent government action. This policy paper discusses how governments can use better regulation instruments (good regulatory practices, risk-based and agile approaches, regulatory delivery, international regulatory cooperation, economic regulators, and behavioural insights) to design, implement and evaluate efficient and effective regulations for the environment.
On 8 May 2023, Finland has published its revised RIA Guidelines in an English version. They can be downloaded here. The new Guidelines include more comprehensive instructions on, for example, the stages of an impact assessment as part of the law drafting process, data collection and assessment methods, and special questions related to impact assessments concerning EU legislation.
The Netherlands adopted revised RIA Guidelines – The Policy Compass – in April 2023. The presentation (pdf) in English can be downloaded here. The RIA website (in Dutch) is here.