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The Regulatory Scrutiny Board (RSB) is publishes its 2018 Annual Report.

The Regulatory Scrutiny Board holds itself accountable and it publishes a report annually that presents what the Board has done to deliver on its mission. The annual reports also reflect on current trends and practices in better regulation policy as these pertain to the European Commission.

The 2018 report describes areas where the Board broke new ground last year. It used its unique vantage point to deliver cross-cutting overviews on e.g. 19 impact assessments that supported multiannual budget proposals. The Board also reports on difficulties with improving evaluation reports that arrive for scrutiny. In response, it has recast its scrutiny of evaluations to consider how impact assessments and evaluations feed into each other in a policymaking cycle. While this does not solve all issues, it does allow the Board to better support evaluation quality. Finally, the Board reports on its own contribution to better regulation, based on three years of accumulated evidence.

The PDF of the full report can be found HERE.

Background:
The Regulatory Scrutiny Board is part of the process of policy-making based on evidence. It provides quality assurance of impact assessments, fitness checks and major evaluations to the political level of the Commission. It helps ensure that initiatives take due account of data and stakeholder groups’ views before political decision-makers consider what action to take. The Board scrutinises all impact assessments and fitness checks and a selection of evaluations. In 2018 this amounted to 76 impact assessments and 11 fitness checks and evaluations.

Compliments of the European Commission Regulatory Scrutiny Board