Guidelines on Quality of EU Legislation and its Impact on Albania
Basic Principles for Law Making
In the last few years the quality of legislation has become a favourite subject. Within the European Union, an extensive debate has been and is still being conducted about increasing the efficiency in the regulatory system. The debate on and actions with regard to improving the quality of legislation take place under the headings of ‘European Governance’ and ‘Better Lawmaking’, and since a short while the slogan ‘Simple is Better’.
‘European governance’ is defined by the Commission as the rules, processes and behaviour that affect the way in which powers are exercised at European level, particularly as regards openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence. These five ‘principles of good governance’ are said to reinforce those of subsidiarity and proportionality. “Proposals must be prepared on the basis of an effective analysis of whether it is appropriate to intervene at EU level and whether regulatory intervention is needed.”
The ‘Better lawmaking’ aspects of the ‘European governance’ White Paper were worked out in a communication and in the document ‘Simplifying and improving the regulatory environment – an action plan. Together with the efforts in the fi elds of consultation and regulatory impact assessment, the action plan envisages the EU legislature to produce better laws, resulting in a basic legislative framework which is simpler, more effective and better understood. In this respect, the main issues that have crystallized so far concern:
1) the selection of the appropriate regulatory level of legislation with the help of the subsidiarity principle;
2) the selection of the appropriate scope and content of legislation to deal with a specifi c issue with the help of the proportionality principle;
3) improving the quality of EU legislation, inter alia via impact assessments, notably identifying fi nancial and administrative consequences of European legislation (with specific attention for the consequences for SMEs, small and medium size enterprises);
4) involvement of stakeholders and public consultations on proposed legislation;
5) simplification of legislation, including codifi cation of the acquis communautaire in order to make it better accessible.