EU Proposals
Negotiations
When the Commission issues its proposal
for consideration by the Council and Parliament, you should be in
a position to develop your RIA to consider more fully the costs
and benefits and risks of each of your options. Your partial RIA
will be used for the following:
Assessing the
Costs and Benefits
Start thinking at the
earliest possible stages about the costs and benefits of the options
and how the measures would be implemented in the UK. For further
information refer to the costs and benefits section. Your Ministers
will wish to consider the options, and the possible effect the proposal
might have at national level. This might include a description of
what it might mean for a typical large/small firm.
Although the prime concerns are the
costs and benefits of regulation to the UK, it would be useful to
have this information for other Member States or the EU as a whole,
where such information is not costly or burdensome to obtain, or
where the proposal itself has major cost implications.
Take into account any figures put
forward by the Commission in its impact assessment.
Contact officials in other
Member States to find out their views and what their priorities
and constraints are. Where appropriate, you should share your early
figures on costs and benefits with them.
The European Secretariat
also co-ordinates on legislative issues, particularly where concessions
in one area may impact on others. You should consult the Secretariat
as necessary throughout the negotiating process, particularly where
any UK difficulties might arise (for example, when there is an unresolved
difference of opinion between departments on a key negotiating point).
Ensure you have read Cabinet Office guidance on how to negotiate
in the EU, available from the Cabinet Office European Secretariat.
Work with other
Member States. You need to discover the positions of other
Member States and form alliances where possible. Get others to support
your amendments. Look out for any RIAs they may have carried out
and encourage them to consider the impacts on their own industry.
You may wish to share information
from your own RIA with them, subject to the sensitivity of keeping
your negotiating position confidential.
Work with the European Parliament.
Briefing MEPs and making contact with members of the relevant committee
can be a good way to influence the final shape of any legislative
proposal, as they put down amendments to the proposal, or give an
opinion on it. You can contact MEPs from all countries directly,
and UKRep (http://www.ukrep.be/)
and the European Secretariat in the Cabinet Office can give you
advice on this.
Generally, a very short factual note
is the most effective means, supplemented by individual meetings
with key committee members. Recently, a UK RIA on fuel quality was
used to demonstrate to MEPs the massive cost of changing Non Road
Mobile Machinery fuel compared with the negligible benefits, leading
to a change in the Parliament’s position.
Work with the
Council Secretariat (who are experts in the field and know
about previous, related legislation) and the Council Legal Service
(who will be working with the Commission and Presidency to redraft
legislation during the negotiations). Getting them to understand
your points of view can be just as important as with Member States,
and a successful way to make changes to the text.
During negotiations, the Council Legal
Service can be requested to advise on the Treaty base or other aspects
of the text. It is prudent to check with departmental lawyers and
UKRep before seeking the advice of the Council Legal Service.
Update the RIA
as you go along. Assess all significant changes to the
substance and the text of the legislative proposal as negotiation
proceeds, as these may change the extent of the impact on those
affected by the legislation in the UK. Encourage the Commission
to update their assessments.
There may be occasions where there
is very little time between a vote in the European Parliament and
the next Council meeting so updates to the RIA will need to be made
quickly.
Project plan for
transposition. Put together a project plan for the eventual
transposition of the legislation. You should have been considering
the practicalities of transposition and enforcement from the earliest
stages of the negotiation, in order to ensure UK implementation
places the minimum burden on industry, and talking to the parts
of the UK Government likely to have a role in implementing it.
Your plan should set out the timing
and resources required in order to transpose the legislation properly
and on time. It should be agreed with Ministers, other departments,
Cabinet Office and, where appropriate, Devolved Administrations,
no later than adoption of the Common Position by the Council.
For more information on project planning
see the Transposition
Guide.
Ministerial sign-off
Although agreeing a piece of legislation, your Minister does not
need to sign off the RIA at this point as you have only reached
a halfway stage in the process. It is only when laying a piece of
UK legislation before Parliament that this sign-off is required.
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