Impact assessment

The Swedish Better Regulation Council scrutinizes the quality of, and issue opinions on, regulatory impact assessments of legislative proposals that may have significant impact on businesses.

What is crucial for the Council in adopting a position on an impact assessment is whether it fulfils the requirements set out in the Ordinance on Regulatory Impact Assessment External link..

In each scrutiny, the Council makes an aggregative assessment of how well the requirements have been met in the impact assessment. When adopting a position, the Council uses the following formulations: The impact assessment does/does not meet the requirements set out in the Ordinance on Regulatory Impact Assessment.

The opinion of the Council is advisory. This means that the Council has no mandate to stop a proposal from being adopted, even if the Council has deemed the impact assessment accompanying the proposal not to meet the necessary requirements.

The Council does not issue opinions on all proposals that it receives. Various circumstances determine whether an opinion will be issued, circumstances, such as the expected effects of a proposal on business, the specified statutory period for response to the referral. One prerequisite for a case to be reviewed by the Council is that it is encompassed by the Council´s mission. The Council does not issue opinions on proposals for general advice or proposals that do not contain any statute text. Proposals concerning European Union legislation also fall outside the Council´s mandate unless the EU-proposal is deemed to have a large impact on businesses in Sweden and a specific request has been made by the regulators to the Council to review the EU impact assessment.

Review of an impact assessment to a proposal from the European Commission leads to an opinion in which the Council presents its advice to what a Swedish impact assessment of the proposal should include.

Unlike the review of a Swedish impact assessment, the review of an impact assessment from the EU is not required to be based and structured on the requirements set out in the Ordinance on Regulatory Impact Assessment. In the review, the Council focuses on if the likely economic effects and effects on competitiveness to Swedish businesses are properly described as well as if there are shortcomings in the description of the Swedish market. The opinion of the Council is advisory and can be used by the government when the proposal is negotiated in the Council of the European Union.