Evaluating impact on public authorities

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Scope

Does the option require significant establishing new or restructuring existing public authorities?[1]

Definition

The introduction of new regulation entails enforcement activities to be performed and managed by public authorities at different levels. In many cases such activities can be carried out by existing public authorities with their present capacity and configuration; in other cases the tasks require expansion and/or restructuring of existing or establishment of new public authorities, which might include government departments and agencies, local authorities, public health bodies, schools and universities, publicly owned corporations and quangos [qua(si) n(on-)g(overnmental) o(rganization), organizations or agencies that are financed by a government but that act independently of it].[1]

In the case of European policy, public authorities can be at local, national or European level; in fact the European Union (EU) is not a federation of states, nor is it simply an organisation for co-operation between governments. It is a unique construction in which member states remain independent sovereign nations, but pool their sovereignty in order to gain a strength and world influence none of them could have on their own. Pooling sovereignty means, in practice, that the member states delegate some of their decision-making powers to shared institutions they have created, so that decisions on specific matters of joint interest can be made democratically at European level.

Given this multi-layered hierarchical structure, this key question embraces a whole chain of public authorities affected by the implementation of policy options at different levels. For instance, the adoption of a new regulation on the reporting obligations regarding certain pollutants would in principle have conseuqences for Eurostat, for national central statistical bureaus, and for decentralised agencies.[1]

Result

EC related information:

Overview of the European Union Activities: Institutional Affairs

Indicators:

To the best of the IQ-Tools team's knowledge, there are no indicators in the Eurostat database or in any other authoritative publicly available databases that are directly related to this key question. Users are invited to contribute their own knowledge to this topic by contacting the IQ-Tools team.[1]

See also

IA TOOLS

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 JRC: IA TOOLS. Supporting inpact assessment in the European Commission. [1]

This text is for information only and is not designed to interpret or replace any reference documents.