The new European institutional cycle for 2024-2029 provides an opportunity to review the Commission’s processes and ways of working, reflecting on how to improve policymaking. The current polycrisis in which policymakers operate accentuates the need for policy solutions which are robust and resilient. Societal polarisation and backlash to the green transition demonstrate the need for solutions with less trade-offs or ability to foresee and mitigate them. Finding the interlinkages between policy areas will enable the green transition to be just and bring people along in this process, truly leaving no one behind.
Impact assessments are a key part of regulatory governance. They collect evidence to help policymakers assess how EU action is justified and how this action can help achieve the EU’s policy objectives. The Better Regulation Guidelines and Better Regulation Toolbox set out the expected process. Through desk research, interviews with policymakers and experts, and a roundtable which brought together experts working on different angles of impact assessments and EU policy more broadly, we explored which aspects of impact assessments and the process of their development could be improved to address the challenge of trade-offs. We arrived at four key challenges:
1. Integrating the long-term in decision-making
2. Achieving a balance between different impacts
3. Assessing impacts in times of crisis
4. Managing capacities and resources
This paper outlines our research approach in more detail before outlining the process of impact assessments in the EU institutions in theory and in practice, highlighting the gaps and challenges in the four key areas listed above. Focusing on these gaps and challenges, we then propose recommendations to help address these, making impact assessments which account for long-term and cross-cutting effects and can respond quickly in a crisis while also not adding too much capacity strain on EU policymakers.