Austria

Overview and recent developments

In Austria, RIA has been mandatory for all primary laws and subordinate regulations since 2013. A threshold test introduced in 2015 determines whether a simplified or full RIA has to be conducted for draft regulations. The new threshold limits the requirement for ex post evaluations introduced in 2013 to regulations passing the threshold. Assessments of whether underlying policy goals have been achieved, the comparison of actual and predicted impacts, and the identification of costs, benefits and unintended consequences of regulations are part of the standard methodology for ex post evaluations.

Institutional setup for regulatory oversight

The Federal Performance Management Office (FPMO) at the Federal Ministry for the Civil Service and Sport reviews the quality of all RIAs and ex post evaluations and provides advice during their development. The FPMO publishes its opinions on RIAs for primary laws and can ask administrators to revise RIAs if their quality is deemed insufficient. The FPMO also issues guidelines and provides training on RIA and ex post evaluation and co-ordinates the use of these tools across government. It also reports annually to Parliament on the implementation of the RIA and ex post evaluation system.

The Ministry of Finance supports the FPMO’s work by reviewing assessments of financial impacts and costs in RIAs and ex post evaluations. It is also involved in issuing the guidelines for these tools. The Federal Ministry of Constitutional Affairs, Reforms, Deregulation and Justice’s Constitutional Service scrutinises the legal quality of regulation under development and issues formal opinions on legal quality that are published on the website of Parliament.

A resolution by the Austrian Parliament has recently triggered an extension of the scope of public consultations on draft primary laws. Since September 2017, all draft primary laws are available on the website of Parliament together with a short description of the legislative project in accessible language, the RIA and other accompanying documents. The public can submit comments on the draft regulation or support comments made by others online. Furthermore, an interactive crowdsourcing platform will be launched in 2018 to provide the public with an opportunity to express their views on planned government reforms prior to important future laws being drafted. This initiative could be a gateway towards establishing a more systematic approach to involving stakeholders earlier in the development of regulations to inform officials about the policy problem and possible solutions. Austria would benefit from extending the scope of public consultations to subordinate regulations, for which no systematic public consultations are conducted.

Requirements to use regulatory management tools for EU-made laws: Austria
Stakeholder engagement		Regulatory impact assessment
Development stage
The government facilitates the engagement of domestic stakeholders in the European Commission’s consultation process	No
Negotiation stage
Stakeholder engagement is required to define the negotiating position for EU directives/regulations	No	RIA is required to define the negotiating position for EU directives/regulations	Yes
Consultation is required to be open to the general public	No
Transposition stage
Stakeholder engagement is required when transposing EU directives	Yes	RIA is required when transposing EU directives	Yes
The same requirements and processes apply as for domestically made laws	Yes	The same requirements and processes for RIA apply as for domestically made laws	Yes
Consultation is required to be open to the general public	No	RIA includes a specific assessment of provisions added at the national level beyond those in the EU directives	No
		RIA distinguishes between impacts stemming from EU requirements and additional national implementation measures	No
Source: Indicators of Regulatory Policy and Governance Survey 2017, http://oe.cd/ireg.

End of the section – Back to iLibrary publication page