Two BR events on 5 December

1/ - Paris: OECD/French Senate workshop on the role of parliaments in better regulation (by invitation from Registration).

"A key task of Parliament is to vote on the law. It is also necessary that the law is clear and enforceable. However, the increasing complexity of contemporary societies has led to a proliferation of bad quality and complex normative texts. To stop this tendency is a government objective taking various routes : codification , simplification laws , legistics, evaluation of the quality and the normativity of the law, etc. In the context of globalization , the challenge is not just legislative drafting and legal quality, public authorities must also ensure effective implementation of the effects of laws passed , and preserve the economic competitiveness and attractiveness of the country.

There are international instruments to promote these goals, especially at the OECD, which has set up a committee on regulatory policy and adopted in 2012 a Recommendation of the Council on Regulatory Policy and Governance . Similarly, parliaments, sharing the objectives of good governance and the quality of legislation, are becoming more attentive to the way laws are implemented and achieve their results, as shown by the development of boards or units providing assessment of bills and laws and the increasing use of assessment tools like CBA and RIA.

This symposium , organized by the Senate Committee for the control of implementation of laws, in partnership with OECD, aims to better identify the role that Parliaments can play in assessing the quality of legislation . Based on testimonies and an exchange of best practices between French institutions and foreign parliamentary assemblies , it will discuss the role of parliaments in the processes and the tools they use for this purpose" (from the organisers' leaflet.)

2/ - The Hague: International Seminar on "Executive discretion and regulatory decision making – Issues and challenges in making regulation more effective" organised by the NL Academy for Legislation (by invitation). 

"The question of the appropriate amount of discretion that the executive branch should wield, and within it in particular regulatory bodies, is central to the understanding of how regulation and enforcement work, and to efforts to make them both more effective and efficient.

Proponents of regulatory discretion consider that it is the only way to escape the conundrum of writing exceedingly specific rules that end up being unwieldy and rapidly obsolete – and lend themselves to “gaming the system” by rogue operators. Critics point towards the risk of abuse, be it regulatory capture or corruption, abuse of power, and breakdown of the rule of law. One of the questions may be if it is at all possible to have enforcement of any type of rule without some sort of discretion." For more information, contact Florentin Blanc.