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Negotiation - Using the RIA to inform your negotiating line
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 [External website] 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.
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
Update the RIAs 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 RIAs will need to be made quickly.
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.
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.
