On 9 October 2006 an international conference on regulatory reform in the new EU Member states was held at the Ministry of Economy. The conference was opened by the Minister of Economy Piotr Grzegorz Woźniak. His welcome to participants was followed by his presentation of the background and aims of the conference and the implementation of regulatory reform in Poland.
Minister Piotr G. Woźniak stressed that the conference “Regulatory reform in practice – New EU Member States Experience” was a good opportunity to present the performance of new Member States in this regulatory reform area and to assess the impact of the Better Regulation initiative on these countries.
The Minister also stressed, that as far as Poland is concerned, a system of better law-making is of crucial importance. It is not only to identify poor regulations and to improve the quality of existing law, but also to introduced systemic changes to enable the creation of effective, high quality regulations.
The Minister also stressed the importance of another factor, i.e. the need to change the mentality and regulatory culture throughout the administration, as the mechanisms of legislative control operate well enough whilst a change of mentality is necessary in law-making, as without it a better system for implementing regulations would be difficult to achieve. Better regulation means enhanced competitiveness, innovation and faster economic growth and thus its quality improvement is a priority for the Polish government, resulting not only from the obligations set out in the Lisbon Strategy but also from the current needs of the national economy.
In conclusion of his speech, Minister Woźniak stated that the new EU Member States already shared a great deal of common experience and that the conference in Poland might offer an excellent opportunity for comparison of their relevant starting points, goals to achieved and referred methods of their accomplishment.
Minister Woźniak assured the conference that Poland did not expect to be made special allowances when implementing regulatory reform. ‘It is our intention to get effectively involved in its mainstream and to implement successive elements of the reform as soon as possible to systematically pass from one stage of the regulatory programme to another’.
First Session: Theoretical and practical aspects of better law-making
- Optimizing law making and compliance – theory and practice
Artur Nowak-Far, Prof., Warsaw School of Economics
speech (file.pdf)
- Law-making in Poland – how to regulate?
Radosław Zubek, PhD, University of Potsdam, Ernst and Young Better Government Programme
speech (file.pdf) , presentation (file.ppt)
- External expertise in law making procedure
Michał Królikowski, PhD, Parliament Analyses Office
Second session: Regulatory reform in the New EU Member States
The second session was the first part of presentations given by speakers from abroad, representing several new EU Member States (PL, CZ, HU, ES, LT) on the regulatory reform in their respective countries.
In her introductory speech Ms Małgorzata Kałużyńska, Director of the Department of Economic Regulation at the Ministry of Economy, in charge of the organisation of the conference reminded of the key importance attached to better regulation at the UE forum.
presentation (file.ppt)
After introductory speech, the Moderator, Mr Andrzej Kaczmarek, Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Economy, gave a presentation on the implementation of regulatory reform in Poland.
Minister Kaczmarek mentioned that on 19 August 2006 the Council of Ministers adopted the Regulatory Reform Programme.
The Regulatory Reform Programme is one of the few documents for which a risk analysis has been made. One of the guiding ideas of the programme development was to show that its implementation will actually have an economic impact on Poland. Regulations have an enormous impact on the functioning of all businesses, and in particular micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises, which are particularly strongly affected by the quality of law as they are more sensitive in this aspect.
Currently Poland has a large number of legislative acts which do not meet entrepreneurs’ expectations. One of the reasons for this phenomenon is certainly an ill-understood competition within the administration – it is quantitative rather than qualitative. There is a “race” in terms of the number of legislative acts produced, resulting in the effect of a high level of law inflation in Poland. As a result, due to the poor quality of law as many as 60% of legislation are merely revisions.
To implement the Regulatory Reform Programme, it would be necessary to have a regulatory policy based on facts, in which the most important determinant is to be focused on tangible effects (e.g. the “one-stop-shop”) and which should be based on reliable analyses (e.g. a standard cost model — SCM).
The measures taken should lead to a lower level of a very important indicator, that is the irritation indicator. Changes in the administration work culture (regulatory culture) are also of fundamental importance – to this end a series of training courses in regulatory reform is planned, Special stress will be on the regulatory impact assessment to enable the evaluation of law quality including costs/benefits and risk assessment when a legal act is enacted.
speech (file.pdf) , presentation (file.ppt)
Presentations by representatives of the new Member States:
- Daniel Trnka – Director, Department for Regulatory Reform, Office of the Council of Ministers, Czech Republic
speech (file.pdf), presentation (file.ppt)
- Krisztián Orban – Advisor, Department of Constitutional Law, the Ministry of Justice and Law Enforcement, Hungary
speech (file.pdf), presentation (file.ppt)
- Ruth Hint - Expert, European Union and International Cooperation Department, the Ministry of Economic Affaires and Communications, Estonia
speech (file.pdf), presentation (file.ppt)
- Aurelia Zulkute – Deputy Director, Internal Market Co-ordination Department, the Ministry of Economy, Lithuania
presentation (file.ppt)
Session 3 - The Sigma Project – Lights and Shadows in the New Member States of the European Union – OECD assessment
Edward Donélan, Senior Consultant, SIGMA projects, OECD
speech (file.pdf), presentation (file.ppt)
The conference was the first opportunity to present collected preliminary results of the regulatory capacity review in New Members States of the EU under the SIGMA Programme – a joint initiative of the EU and OECD, supervised by the European Commission.