On 20 March 2017, at the headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels, the Conference presenting the report on the first year of work of the Regulatory Scrutiny Board was held. The conference was opened by the First Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for better regulation in the EU, Frans Timmermans. In his opening speech he stressed the importance of and need for better regulation and reported on the progress made in establishing better regulation as a way of working in the European Commission, noting that further improvement is needed in public consultations, as well as the development of a framework for monitoring the better regulation policy itself and its review in 2018. As the main challenge, Mr Timmermans pointed to the „crisis of evidence and facts“, due to the increasingly prevalent attitude in society globally that when emotions and facts collide, emotions win. This calls for a new way of communicating the complex scientific analyses carried out under better regulation, in order to convince sceptical citizens of their benefits. A welcome address was also given by the Chair of the Regulatory Scrutiny Board, Ms Anne Bucher.
The first panel examined the current state of impact assessment as an instrument of better regulation. Presentations on the topic were given by the Director-General of the EP’s Parliamentary Research Service, Mr Anthony Teasdale, the Head of the Regulatory Policy Division of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Mr Nikolai Malyshev, and others.
The second panel was devoted to evidence-based impact assessment. The panel was chaired by the Chair of Germany’s National Regulatory Control Council, Mr Johannes Ludewig, and the panellists were Ms Tracey Brown, Director of ‘Sense about Science’ – a charity that promotes the understanding and use of scientific evidence and combats its misinterpretation, Dr Claudio Radaelli, lecturer in political science and political economy and Director of the Centre for European Governance at the University of Exeter, and others.
The final discussion was devoted to the challenges in the practice of regulatory scrutiny. Short presentations were given by Ms Anne Bucher – Chair of the Regulatory Scrutiny Board, Prof. Jiřina Jílková – Chair of the Regulatory Impact Assessment Board of the Czech Republic, and others. The conference was closed after a short speech by Mr Jean-Eric Paquet – Deputy Secretary-General of the European Commission responsible for better regulation and policy coordination (economic governance, internal market and competition, resource efficiency and employment, education and social policies).
Representatives of the Center for Regulatory Impact Assessment had the pleasure of taking part in the conference at the special invitation of the Secretariat of the Regulatory Scrutiny Board.