Impact assessment of Community legislation and consultation procedures

The European Parliament adopted a resolution by 501 votes in favour, 1 against with 23 abstentions an own-initiative report on assessment of the impact of Community legislation and the consultation procedures. The report was drafted by Bert DOORN (EPP-ED, NL). Parliament welcomed the Commission's initiative to adopt a systematic impact assessment approach of new legislation, and proposed that impact assessments should be carried out on initiatives that the Commission presents in its annual policy strategy or its work programme and on Parliament and Council amendments which will have a substantial impact on social, economic and environmental aspects. Parliament proposed the following procedure to that end: - any legislative proposal by the Commission should be accompanied by a global estimate of the costs of such legislation on social, economic and environmental aspects; - the global cost estimate will be monitored by the audit; - the Commission, Council and Parliament will lay down a cost threshold above which an extended impact assessment should be carried out; - if it is established that a legislative proposal exceeds the threshold, the Commission will assess the impact of the proposed legislation on social, economic and environmental aspects, together with the policy alternatives available to the legislator in that scenario; - the results of cost assessments and impact assessments will be added to the proposal and published; - the Commission will only send Parliament proposals accompanied by a cost assessment and an impact assessment; - amendments by Parliament that will have an impact on social, economic and environmental aspects will be submitted for cost assessment to an audit set up with whatever reasonable means Parliament has at its disposal; - the Council will follow a comparable procedure, and will set up an audit in the Council Secretariat. Parliament pointed out that this procedure complies with practical experience in countries where impact assessment has been carried out for some considerable time.�