The Institute for Impact Assessment and Scientific Evaluation of Policy and Legislation

March 10th 2020

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The Impact Assessment Institute conducts regular analysis on Inception Impact Assessments (IIAs) adopted by the European Commission. 

In February 2020, four Inception Impact Assessments were published on the European Commission’s website (https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/initiatives). They relate to deforestation and forest degradation, EU accession to the 2019 Hague Judgments Convention, cooperation between tax authorities in the digital economy, regulatory regime for financial markets and services. An Inception Impact Assessment titled "EU initiative on fair minimum wages" was published on 12 February, but later removed from the website.

Our scrutiny of the Inception Impact Assessments, evaluating the text according to Better Regulation principles, has identified good practice alongside a number of concerns in the assessment of evidence (see table below). These concerns relate mainly to the identification of policy options, the assessments of expected impacts, which may prejudge the upcoming full Impact Assessments or lack balance in their analysis, and the alignment with Better Regulation-prescribed timeline. 

Stakeholders are invited to provide their own insights into these IIAs and to reach out to the Institute’s Analytics division to discuss further scrutiny of evidence on these or other dossiers.