With the Communication on Smart Regulation issued in October 2010, the European Commission tried to foster a better management of the whole policy cycle. According to that Communication, amending policy proposals must be preceded by an ex-post assessment of the current situation, allowing a “closing of the policy cycle”. This paper tries to answer the question whether the EU impact assessment (IA) system is fit to steer and close the policy cycle, and what is the relationship between ex-ante IA and ex-post evaluation on the ground so far.

CEPS Chief Executive Karel Lannoo observes in this CEPS Commentary that there is a compelling need to attract more women to positions of high responsibility in Europe in light of their demonstrated capacity to contribute significantly to the improvement of governance.

This report explores the untapped growth that could result from the better functioning of services markets in the EU and aims to bridge the gap between the policy debate and the latest empirical economic analysis in this field. The authors find ample scope for further economic growth in the EU, both from the reform of domestic services and from the deepening of the ‘single services market’. Domestic and EU-level services reforms are so intertwined economically that indeed we may speak of a ‘double dividend’ and, for the eurozone, a ‘triple dividend’.

Private governance is currently being evoked as a viable solution to many public policy goals, although the current track record of private regulatory schemes is mixed. Policy guidance documents around the world still require that policy-makers give priority to self- and co-regulation, with little or no additional guidance being given to policy-makers to devise when, and under what circumstances, these solutions can prove viable from a public policy perspective.

Effective enforcement and compliance with EU law is not just a legal necessity, it is also of economic interest since the potential of the Single Market will be fully exploited. Enforcement barriers generate unjustified costs and hindrances or uncertainty for cross-border business and might deprive consumers from receiving the full benefit of greater choice and/or cheaper offers.

CEPS Senior Fellow Andrea Renda contributed a chapter on “Telecommunications Regulation” to this comprehensive volume entitled Regulation and Economics. Edited by Roger J. Van den Bergh, Professor of Law and Economics, Erasmus School of Law at Erasmus University in Rotterdam and Alessio M. Pacces, Professor of Law and Finance, Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University and Research Associate, European Corporate Governance Institute, the book provides a state-of-the-art overview of regulatory economics and reviews the main theories, tools, and domains of regulation.

Published jointly with Ernst & Young, this report proposes a new approach to EU innovation that aims to improve its effectiveness and reduce administrative burdens for companies relying on EU funding channels. The analysis is backed by a survey of 680 business leaders from 15 EU member states to obtain their perspective on the EU’s innovation policy. Chief among the report’s recommendations are the following:

Following an examination of the present procedures of the European Commission in competition cases under Regulation 1/2003, this paper finds that the existing safeguards for due process are not sufficient and explains why reform is urgently needed. Three possible radical solutions are outlined: 1) setting up a decision-making body within the Commission, 2) setting up a separate European competition authority and 3) making the Commission a “prosecutor” bringing competition cases before the General Court, which would adopt the first legally binding decisions.

The use of economics in public policy, in the form of ex ante Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA), is strongly advocated by international organizations such as the OECD and the World Bank. In the US and the EU, hundreds of RIAs are produced every year to justify public intervention in the form of regulation. But reality shows that in many other countries the adoption and implementation of this tool has been patchy at best.

With the Commission’s consultation period on the Single Market Act nearing its end, this CEPS Policy Brief urges the EU to get its act together and give immediate priority to deepening and widening the Single Market. The author argues, however, that it is essential that the legitimacy questions surrounding ‘more Single Market’ are taken seriously at both EU and at national level.

Jacques Pelkmans is CEPS Senior Research Fellow and Jan Tinbergen Chair and Director of the Department of European Economic Studies, College of Europe.
 

Critical infrastructures such as energy, communications, banking, transportation, public government services, information technology etc., are more vital to industrialized economies and now than ever before. At the same time, these infrastructures are becoming increasingly dependent on each other, such that failure of one of them can often propagate and result in domino effects.

This working paper critically discusses the most prominent empirical approach used to measure regulation in EU countries: the OECD product market regulation (PMR) indicators. There are two vintages of PMR: one based on the period 1997-2005 and an improved ‘integrated’ PMR developed over 2006-09. The author finds that the latter constitutes an improvement, reducing or eliminating some of the shortcomings of the first PMR indicators, but that a systemic EU-neglect bias is not addressed and remains a disturbing facet.

The normative justification for delegation to independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) is that they operate by using technical analysis and expertise rather than political considerations in their decision-making processes. Although delegation has been discussed as a design principle, systematic evidence on the conditions under which IRAs make use of scientific knowledge and how is still scarce.

Published in: Telecommunications Policy, Vol. 34, Nos 1-2, February-March 2010