On 07.06.2022, at a special event at the Council of Ministers, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development presented the first report of its kind, containing the results of its diagnostic scan of Bulgaria’s regulatory policy since the start of the reform at the end of 2016.
The key findingsmade in the report are that:
- Bulgaria has put in place a solid regulatory policy system, but a targeted, stand-alone, whole-of-government strategy for its implementation is missing;
- The institutional framework for regulatory policy is well developed, but the problem is its implementation in practice, and the lack of inter-institutional coordination hampers the creation of effective legislation;
- Regulatory oversight and quality control are ineffective. Quality control of ex-ante impact assessments and stakeholder engagement processes takes place too late. There is no quality control mechanism for ex-post impact assessments either;
- Ex-ante impact assessment does not currently help to inform the regulatory process because it is carried out at too late a stage of drafting normative acts, and the quality of its analysis is insufficient;
- Stakeholder engagement in Bulgaria is at a good level compared with other EU countries. However, the government rarely gives advance notice of planned consultations. A significant share of the laws proposed on the initiative of members of parliament are still not prepared in a transparent manner;
- Systematic ex-post evaluation of existing legislation is yet to be introduced in practice. The administration lacks the analytical capacity to carry out such evaluations. The institutional framework for reducing regulatory burden is ineffective, and regulatory barriers to competition in Bulgaria remain exceptionally high.
The key recommendations made by the OECD to our regulatory system are extremely clear, targeted, precisely focused and well balanced. They are at two main levels: practical and political-strategic. In the first group, the recommendations at the practical level are for:
- Revamping the institutional set-up for regulatory oversight, to improve the quality of regulatory management tools; for this purpose several options should be reviewed, including the establishment of an “independent watchdog” for quality control;
- Promoting the effective implementation of ex-ante IA in practice, by introducing measures to strengthen analytical capacity, extending the scope of IA to include acts issued by ministers, and reviewing the targeting of the IA itself;
- Increasing stakeholders’ access to public consultations, to promote the transparency of the legislative process;
- Introducing systematic ex-post evaluation in practice, which is crucial, accompanied by strengthening analytical capacity and introducing regulatory oversight of ex-post evaluation.
According to the recommendations at the political-strategic level Bulgaria should develop and publish a clear, formal and binding whole-of-government strategy for regulatory policy as a stand-alone high-level public document in the form of a government decision, confirming the political dedication and commitment to high-quality regulation.
The opinion expressed during the event by the Center for Regulatory Impact Assessment states that all recommendations are very precisely formulated and fully cover the problems Bulgaria faces, but they refer to the next stage of development, when the regulatory reform has been completed and new goals are pursued for building an improved strategic and institutional framework for regulatory policy. Bulgaria has not completed the reform, because the regulatory management tools do not work in the National Assembly. The most valuable of these recommendations is the need to reaffirm the political will at the highest level, by each of the two entities with the right of legislative initiative, for quality regulation. Instead of a government decision, in our view an inter-institutional agreement on better law-making is needed, such as the one in force at European Union level since 2016, binding the two key institutions, the National Assembly and the Council of Ministers, to comply with the highest standards of quality of legislation. Only this would allow the regulatory reform to be completed within the legislative branch.
See the full text of the report in English: OECD Regulatory Scan of Bulgaria.