Integrating Sustainable Development Into European Policymaking: The Role of Impact Assessments

Abstract

Since the adoption of the EU's first Sustainable Development Strategy in 2001, the European Commission has been committed to undertaking impact assessments of its major policy proposals, covering the potential positive and negative economic, social and environmental effects both inside and outside the European Union. This paper provides as evaluation of a sample of the Commission's recent EC Impact Assessments, focusing on the extent to which the goal of sustainable development has been integrated into the impact assessment analysis.

Advancing the theory and practice of impact assessment: Setting the research agenda

“…Indeed policy assessment practice appears quite removed from the field of impact assessment with its concerns with sustainability: as the authors say, "environmental objectives may or may not be a significant feature of a policy assessment system, if present at all" (p25). They go on to describe how, despite the obvious potential for policy assessment to contribute to a vertically integrated framework of impact assessment, at which environmental and broader sustainability issues are considered in the appropriate degree of detail at the different levels of decision-making, in practice much policy assessment is driven by concerns about business competition and regulatory streamlining (Franz and Kirkpatrick, 2007). In the EU context this difference in focus reflects the separation of responsibility for impact assessment processes within the EU 2 .…”

“…It is the responsibility of the Secretariat General which has oversight over all Commission activities, and is implemented by requiring individual Directorate Generals to undertake their own assessments. This has resulted in a variation in emphasis depending on the focus of the Directorate General, with many focusing on economic issues at the expense of environmental and social issues (Franz and Kirkpatrick 2007).…”

The European Union and Policy Coherence for Development: Reforms, Results, Resistance

“…A key indication of this trend, and certainly one of the main innovations in EU governance over the past decade, is the introduction of the IA procedure in 2003 as part of the process of formulating new policies. The push for IAs was shaped both by the 2001 Sustainable Development Strategy and by the Commission's 'Better Regulation' agenda, eventually replaced by the 'Smart Regulation' agenda (Rowe, 2006;Franz and Kirkpatrick, 2007). By outlining potential positive and negative effects of proposed policy actions, including synergies and trade-offs between competing objectives, IAs represent a tool for the exchange of technical information between interested parties (Bäcklund, 2009).…”

“…Thus, the primary attraction of IAs, which obviously have a strong rationalistic appeal, would be that of making governments and regulatory agencies rely more on evidence-based analysis and of making them more accountable (Radaelli and Meuwese, 2010). However, the execution of IAs has not met initial expectations: numerous concerns have been raised on their overall quality, particularly the quantification of costs and benefits of alternative proposals and the effective involvement of stakeholders (Kirkpatrick and Franz, 2007;Pollack and Hafner-Burton, 2010;Torriti, 2010). The IA procedure was originally seen by the European Commission as a 'a powerful mechanism' to further advance the promotion of PCD -and was further stressed by the 2009 revised guidelines, stating explicitly that more attention would have to be paid to assessing the impact of all EU policies on developing countries (European Commission, 2009a) -and corresponds to the political commitment expressed by the EU's Foreign Affairs Council, which called for an 'evidence-based and result-oriented approach to promoting PCD' (Council, 2012).…”

Mainstreaming international governance: The environment, gender, and IO performance in the European Union

“…Studies of EU impact assessment have also grown dramatically; see, e.g., the excellent analyses by Renda (2006), Cecot et al (2008), Meuwese (2008), andBäcklund (2009). Several studies have focused specifically on the place of environmental considerations in Commission IA; see, e.g., Wilkinson et al (2004), Franz and Kirkpatrick (2007), and Ruddy and Hilty (2008). were intended to replace all previous single-issue assessments and assess the potential economic, social and environmental impacts of significant proposed legislation, regulations, and policy proposals. Following the SDS, impact assessments were expected to be "balanced" among the three fields (a point to which we shall return presently).…”