BETTER REGULATION IN THE EU AND ITS MEMBER STATES: EXPERIENCE FOR UKRAINE

Abstract

The article examines the experience of better regulation in the EU and its member states. The European Union and the 28 EU member states show a strong political commitment towards regulatory reform. In the European Union, regulatory policy has progressed under the better regulation agenda and played a crucial role in shaping the current regulatory processes. At the same time, all EU member states have adopted an explicit policy to promote the quality of regulations. To this end, the author analyses the key findings of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 2019 report «Better Regulation Practices across the European Union». In the report the OECD has analysed the application of all 28 EU member states’ regulatory management tools to EU-made laws and regulations. The article also gives examples of the best regulatory practices of the EU member states such as Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Sweden, the United Kingdom. The article concludes that the experience of the EU and its member states in developing and implementing a better regulation policy, in particular the better regulation agenda, is beneficial for Ukraine. In this regard, the article highlights the following legislative and institutional components of this experience: stakeholder engagement in the process of policymaking and regulatory policy implementation by automatically publishing of draft regulatory acts and accompanying impact assessments on the specially designed interactive government portal; highlighting the preliminary and final stages of regulatory impact assessment of all regulations, except for deregulatory and low-cost measures, thereby taking into account stakeholder comments; regular and systematic conduct of ex ante and ex-post evaluation of laws and regulations on the basis of a specially developed sound evidence-based methodology; conducting of regulatory impact assessment and stakeholder engagement during the process of EU directives transposition into member states’ national legislation; introduction of systematic regulatory oversight and quality control of regulatory management tools, which should cover not only regulatory impact assessment practice but also stakeholder engagement.