The practice of impact assessment in the EU: Evolutions and challenges

Impact assessments (IAs) have spread all over the world in the last years as tools for appraising public policies and promoting evidence-based policymaking. The European Commission, in particular, has a good record in its practice of impact assessment using always-improved guidelines and toolboxes to frame the work of its civil servants. While the quality of IAs conducted by the European Commission has often been evaluated, the identification of drivers of improvement remains poor. The objective of this paper is to find the factors that allow improving the quality of IAs realized by the European Commission. Drivers relating to the agents and process of impact assessment are identified on the basis of a literature review, the analysis of official documents and ten semi-directed interviews with officials from the Commission. The quality of IAs is strongly dependent on some crucial actors, especially the skills, profile and training of the civil servants doing IAs. The Secretariat General and the Regulatory Scrutiny Board, as well as the support unit in each Directorate-General play a crucial role of advisers. The resources of the Joint Research Centre’s resources may be mobilized, while an appropriate strategy of stakeholder consultation can make a difference. At the process-level, the importance of early planning and of stages in preparation of IAs as well as the appropriate use of ex post evaluation have been pointed out. In the conclusion, the rationale for impact assessment in the European Commission is examined and some leads for further research are provided