Eurasian RIA guidelines now online

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The Eurasian Economic Community now has a RIA page with resources in English for guidance or comparative purposes.

Up to now, this blog was the only place where this information had been published, thanks to our friend D. Tsygankov (see post dated 10 March 2015 for a summary).

Eurasian Commission spells out RIA method

Thanks to our friend D. Tsygankov (HSE, Moscow), we are kept informed about the progress of RIA in the Eurasian Economic Commission. We know that RIA became operational on 1 January 2015 in this "supranational regulatory body" formed between four ex-USSR countries, for a number of economic decisions (see post dated 31 December 2014).

Chapter IX  "Regulatory Impact Assessment of the Commission's draft decisions" of the EEC's rules is now available in an unofficial translation which has been sent to the blog for the information of international readers.  

The specific mechanism of the "Eurasian" RIA, including exclusions (RIA targeting), was discussed at the international workshop held last December in the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation. Chapter IX defines the scope of the scheme, specifies which service is in charge of the research, outlines consultation obligations and most interestingly lists the various economic impacts that need to be measured. We would now need to see some of these RIAs published online for the instruction of RIA pratitioners worldwide.

Eurasian RIA operational from 1 Jan 2015

On December 23, 2014 the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council at the level of Heads of States at a meeting in Moscow adopted new Regulations of the Eurasian Economic Commission, including new sections – Chapter VIII "Pre-publication of draft decisions of the Commission, the Intergovernmental Council and the Supreme Council prepared by the Commission" and Chapter IX "Regulatory Impact Assessment of the Commission's draft decisions" coming into force on January 1, 2015. These sections should increase the transparency of the EEC, provide a preliminary assessment of decisions affecting doing business.
The specific mechanism of the "Eurasian" RIA, including exclusions (RIA targeting), was discussed at the international workshop held on December 12, 2014 in the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation (from our correspondent in Moscow, D. Tsygankov).

Moscow Higher School of Economics discusses Smart Regulation

(Photo Natalya Kazmina )The international workshop organised by the National Research University 'Higher School of Economics(NRU HSE) on 'Development of smart regulation mechanisms: towards a new regulatory policy in Russia' on 14 March was, in your blogger's view, a great success. A success because of the high number (around 60) of participants from not only Moscow administrations, but also from the business community and the other levels of governement (regions and from the Eurasian Economic Commission); and a success for the quality and scope of the discussions.

The RF authorities will draw their own (official) conclusions, but in the meantime, your blogger noted that several key points met with some degree of consensus:

- the need to complete the regulatory policy agenda, currently heavily dependent on RIA, with other BR components such as an overall explicit policy, some type of quality and performace oversight function to check that the policy is effective, a formal consultation policy, etc. 

- thanks to the presence of business sector representatives and supra and sub-national levels of government, it was quite clear that there was a real need for a coordination and consultation process to bring together all the regulators, in the interest of the economy at large and the civil society;

- most encouraging was the adherence of all participants to the principle that regulatory policy was indeed a great priority for the the growth of the economy thanks to more efficient markets and, accessorily, a better Doing Business ranking.

Our warm thanks and congratulations to Daniel Tsygankov, (and his director Andrey Klimenko, Head of the Institute for Public Administration and Municipal Management) for organising what may later appear as the official launch of Smart Regulation in the Russian Federation.

Programme and all presentations online at http://regulatory-policy.hse.ru/en/pres and photos on Daniel's Facebook page (link above).
For Russian speakers, see "Smart Regulation in 1200 words", now in Russian as УМНОЕ РЕГУЛИРОВАНИЕ

Smart regulation arrives in Moscow (conference)

(Announcement from Moscow) On March 14, 2014 the National Research University 'Higher School of Economics' (NRU HSE) will host an international workshop 'Development of smart regulation mechanisms: towards a new regulatory policy in Russia'.
The workshop consists of two plenary sessions ('scientific-oriented' and 'practical-oriented'). In turn, the latter is organized by levels of regulation — supranational, national and subnational.
The first session speakers are: Senior adviser on regulatory reform in Ministry of Finance of France, editor of the international blog Smartregulation.net Charles-Henri MONTIN — on potential of OECD countries' best practices in regulatory reform; Head of the RIA Center at the Higher School of Economics Daniel TSYGANKOV — on promising tools for improving regulatory decisions quality; Director General of Information-Consulting Centre "Business Tezaurus" Oleg SHESTOPEROV — on approaches to the rulemaking 'limitation' in the field of business regulation.
The second session speakers are: Director of the Department for Development of Entrepreneurship of the Eurasian Economic Commission Rustam AKBERDIN — on practical regulatory impact analysis in the Eurasian Economic Commission; Director of Program Planning and Regulatory Impact Assessment Department of the Ministry of Economy and Planning of the Ulyanovsk region Maksim SVETUNKOV — on experience of conducting RIA in the region; representative of the RIA Department of the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia — practical experience of conductingRIA in the executive bodies, representative of the Economic Department of the State Duma of Russia — the use of financial-economic justification tools in legislative work.
The conference will be broadcast live on the internet, at addresses available on the HSE site on 14 March from 10:00 to 18:00.

Red Tape Nightmare (Uzbekistan)

The web reports selectively on governments’ bright ideas to carry out their policies, often by keeping closer track of their citizens. Those interested can subscribe to a Google News alert on « red tape » which yields more than 10 items a day.
Among the recent stories, this one found on Eurasianet.org, seems to deserve a prize. « The city of Tashkent is making it easier for police to sort residents into “insiders” and “outsiders” by forcing everyone to get a new stamp in their internal passports. It’s unclear what’s behind the new measure, but in one of the most corrupt places on earth the extra red tape could provide police another opportunity to stick their hands in residents’ pockets, observers fear. »
It will be interesting to see how this new measures affects the country’s ranking in the Doing Business index, currently at 166th out of 183 (and absolutely last 183/183 for "trading across borders").