New directions for administrative simplification (France)

On 10 January, the French government launched a new administrative simplification programme for companies, at a first meeting with the representatives of the business world. Four ministers belonging to the economics branch ushered in the new agenda, which implements the "Competitiveness Pact" adopted in November and confirmed in the Modernisation of Public Action strategy delineated on 18 December.

It is interesting that Parliament will be associated to the policy, with an MP (Mr Thierry Mandon) dedicated to support the definition of the progamme.

The range of the strategy is illustrated by the list of seven priority projects already launched by the Government:

• the "Tell us once" principle to enable companies to avoid multiple submission of the same information to different administrations;
• a single social contribution return form ;
• simplification and acceleration of procedures related to business real estate operations;
• a single portal of public grants to enterprises;
• a new effort to limit over-transposition (gold-plating) of Community law into French law;
• introduction of the SME-test to assess the impact of new legislation on small business and micro-enterprises;
• reduced barriers to export for SMEs and VSEs.

Participants received a very complete draft consultation methodology which will be published by this blog as soon as it is finalised.

For more information about the meeting, see the official communiqué, and for some comment, an article (Le Moniteur).

A programme of administrative simplification for citizens, comprising 26 measures, was announced in December.

OECD countries support improved governance in MENA region

Next week, OECD and the French government will host in Paris a conference for high ranking officials from the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa) on "regulatory quality for inclusive growth and competitiveness." This event is part of the programme defined in late November 2012 at the meeting of the Steering Group of the MENA-OECD Initiative, where policy makers from MENA and OECD reiterated their support for measures to strengthen the business climate and governance in the region (see official communiqué). In November, the Steering Group committed to organise activities aiming inter alia at improving the clarity and efficiency of regulations and creating a public administration that is conducive to quality public services and economic growth. With this OECD-MENA Initiative on Governance and Investment for Development, the Organisation is also contributing to give substance to commitments under the Deauville Partnership.
Next week's Paris meeting will aim to define the operational plan of future activities to support regulatory reform in the region.
For regular updates, subscribe to OECD-MENA flux.

New evaluation methodology in France

The French Prime Minister has just published an interesting circulaire (standing instruction) dated 7 January on the evaluation of public policies and simplification plans. Following the first meeting of the interdepartmental committeeon modernization of public policy, which took place on 18 December, the PM asked each minister to carry out, by the end of the year 2013, an evaluation of public policies under his responsibility, and to draw up a ministerial program for modernization and simplification. An appendix to the circulaire gives a step-by-step methodological guide for the evaluation of "partnership public policies."
The new modernisation strategy, which succeeds the General review of public policies in force between 2007 and 2010, continues to stress the internal scrutiny of public policies and the search for administrative efficiency with fiscal constraints as starting points for reform. The stated goal of the exercise is to draw up a "shared vision of policies" based on an objective evaluation of inter alia their relevance, efficiency and sustainability. There is no stated overall economic objective (such as competitiveness or jobs for instance). The methodology examines in detail how the ministries must steer the project and mentions consulting stakeholders, among which there are the locally elected officials, the public social protection bodies and the beneficiaries (including business). There is no provision for a specific business advisory structure.
Meanwhile, the pressure from the trade unions does not show any sign of letting up. They have all expressed the fear that the new policy serves to identify new budget savings, and ultimately to obey the same logic as the RGPP, even if the key measure of the latter, the non-replacement of the half positions vacated by retirement, has been abandoned. One trade union even condemns "a new process that maintains the objectives of the RGPP cuts in jobs, services and public functions."

New Business Secretary appointed (UK)

Today the UK Government announced the appointment of Lord Younger as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Business Innovation and Skills. He will be in particular in charge of steering the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill through its final stages in the House of Lords (which meets today). V. Cable remains the better known Business Secretary. From the new "gov.uk" release: "The government’s economic policy objective is to achieve ‘strong, sustainable and balanced growth that is more evenly shared across the country and between industries’. It set four ambitions in the ‘Plan for Growth’ (PDF 1.7MB), published at Budget 2011:

• To create the most competitive tax system in the G20
• To make the UK the best place in Europe to start, finance and grow a business
• To encourage investment and exports as a route to a more balanced economy
• To create a more educated workforce that is the most flexible in Europe.

Work is underway across government to achieve these ambitions, including progress on more than 250 measures as part of the Growth Review. Developing an Industrial Strategy gives new impetus to this work by providing businesses, investors and the public with more clarity about the long-term direction in which the government wants the economy to travel."

"Regulatory smorgasbord": US Unified Agenda

Observers in the US are not kind in their welcome to the late publication (21 December) of the semiannual regulatory plan of regulatory and deregulatory actions called "Unified Agenda". For a full description of the regulatory planning process, see the relevant OIRA pages. The American Action Forum examines the "regulatory smorgasbord" of over 2300 actions and estimates that it will generate high regulatory costs for the economy (possibly $123.2 billion in costs and 13.6 million hours in  paperwork burden).

1st International Conf. on Legislative Drafting

The US Federal Bar Association announces that it is convening the First International Conference on Legislative Drafting and Law Reform, to be held in Washington on 8-9 March 2013.

Planned topics for this international conference include:

• Legislative Drafting and Drafting International Treaties
• Comparative Legislative Drafting: the Experiences in the United Kingdom and the Middle East
• Foreign Policy Making, Law Making, and Legislative Drafting: The Interface
• Legislative Drafting and Judicial Approaches to Interpretation
• Legislative Drafting: Transferring Treaties to National Legislation
• New Challenges in Legislative Drafting
• Legislative Drafting and Law Reform
• Legislative Drafting and the Criminal Justice System
• Use of Definitions in Legislative Drafting
• Teaching Legislative Drafting: New Approaches
• Legislative Drafting: Viewpoints of the Judge
• Basic Principles of Legislative Drafting

This blog has in a previous post shown how good legislative drafting can contribute to smart regulation. For examples, see the "legistics" category of this blog(information from Dr Tonye Clinton Yaya, see also the website of the International Journal of Legislative Drafting and Law Reform).

Irish EU presidency programme

Today 9 January the Irish government published its programme for its six month in the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union which started on 1 January, declaring its intention of focusing on stability, jobs and growth.

Priorities were chosen on the basis of the current agenda of EU legislation and initiatives. They include, among other things:

• lasting stability, beginning with the renewal of economic governance in Europe
• putting a spotlight on youth unemployment
• legislation to promote the digital economy and measures aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises
• a focus on the potential of natural resources, on land as well as at sea
• the promotion of trade agreements and the pursuit of the enlargement agenda.

At this stage, there are no announcements about the future of smart regulation as a tool to contribute to these goals, but do watch this space for developments.