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Ex-ante Policy Impact Assessment in MoldovaLegal backgroundRequirements for Impact Assessment were introduced in October 2006 by the Government Decision on the Methodology of Analysis of Regulatory Impact and Monitoring of the Efficiency of Regulations (Regulatory Decision). This Decision requires IA for all normative acts adopted by the executive authorities (Government, Ministries, etc) and that affect the business and entrepreneurial activity. This was followed by another Government Decision on the Rules for the Elaboration and Unified Requirements for the Policy Documents (Policy Decision) that requires IA for all policy documents elaborated by the executive authorities. Some basic requirements of IA were put into legal acts that require Explanatory Notes for all legislative acts, namely the Law on Legislative Acts for acts to be adopted by the Parliament and Law on Normative Acts of the Government and of the central and local public authorities for acts to be adopted by those authorities. Both laws refer to the so-called Explanatory Note to justify the draft law (article 20) or draft normative act (article 37); the Explanatory Note should contain the following elements: a) Conditions that created the need for the elaboration of the draft law, including the need for harmonization of the legal act with EU legislation; the result that is to be achieved by new regulations; b) Principal provisions, the place of the act in the legislative system, emphasis of the new elements, social and economic and other effects created by the legal act; c) References to the respective regulations in EU legislation and to the level of compatibility of the draft legal act with the existing legislation; and d) Economic and financial argumentation in case the implementation requires financial expenditures or other investments (this in practice refers to the impact on state budget). There are thus two bases for conducting Impact Assessment: the Laws and the Government Decisions. Both require the submission of an Explanatory Note, but comparison between these two bases shows that there is a significant difference between the IA requirements imposed by each. The Regulatory and Policy Decisions follow the logic of the standard impact assessment process, whereas the Explanatory Notes required by the Laws on Legislative and Normative Acts focus only on the justification of the proposed legal norm (no alternatives are considered), without looking at the whole string of the policy process. Theoretically, the role of the Explanatory Note is to provide a sound (legal, economic, social) justification for the proposed legal draft. However in practice one finds exceptionally few cases of that. At the same time, Explanatory Notes aim only at supporting the legal drafting solution proposed, and do not discuss possible alternatives to the proposed legal norms – either in terms of the alternative legal norms or of considering non-legal solutions. The Regulatory Decision was introduced as a part of Regulatory reform project with the aim to improve the business environment, namely to implement the Law on Entrepreneurial Activity (No. 235-XVI, July 2006). Therefore the primary focus of the Impact Assessment methodology is the business and entrepreneurial activity area. The Regulatory Decision, in art. 2 of Chapter 1 says that the impact should be evaluated against the interests of society and the entrepreneurial interests. No guidelines are available for the elaboration of the policy documents of the IA for the legislative and normative acts as provided in the Regulatory Decision. Both Regulatory and Policy Decisions are no more than 3 pages long. Both documents are comparable by their content and quality and contain: 1) key definitions, 2) major steps in the IA, 3) the process of carrying out of IA and 4) the content of the final document. Institutional backgroundIn individual line ministries, Policy Units were set up by Governmental Decision No. 710 from July 2006, to commence their operation at the end of 2006. The formal mandate is to elaborate policies, evaluate sectoral policies and monitor the implementation of the policies, including assessment of economic, social, financial and environmental impacts. Most of the Ministries have already created Policy Units that are presumed to carry out the policy analysis. The units are responsible for policies, legislative proposals and related budgets. Thus, the Policy units within the ministries will be elaborating, evaluating and providing support on various policy aspects and policy documents, including impact assessments. However, they are not responsible for the elaboration of legislative proposals within the substantive policy domains of the ministries. In their mandate they are to be supported and coordinated by two bodies: the Government Office Unit for Policy (Policy Decision) and Ministry of Economy (Regulatory Decision). At this point in time the Government office has not yet created any specialized unit for this mandate and it is not clear where this function is to be located. Policy aspect is to be monitored by the future Governmental Office Unit for policies, whereby the Governmental Office Unit will be offering the support and the coordination for the ministries and the Ministerial Policy units. The latter, in return will oversee and provide support to individual substantive departments of the ministry. Regulatory Decision obliges all the central public administration bodies (art. 2) to assign responsible persons for conducting IA. The location of these persons are not uniform throughout the line ministries, depending on the ministry they could be in different departments, with most of the responsible persons to be found in the legal department. In accordance with the Regulatory Decision, the Ministry of Economy will provide the methodological support and coordination for the activity of the assigned responsible persons within the Ministries (art. 4 of the GD 1230). A Regulatory Committee, chaired by a vice-minister of Economy, is formed and coordinated by the Ministry of Economy and composed of wide representatives who look into all draft normative and legislative acts that could impact or affect business activity. the Committee should normally give a “green light” to the proposed drafts. The work of the Committee is supported by Secretariat and legal experts paid through World Bank project on regulatory reform. The Committee prepares non-binding opinions on the draft legal and normative acts proposed by various Ministries for the approval that are supposed to include already IA in accordance with the Regulatory Decision. Relevant Areas of Impact AssessmentContent to be uploaded Related ActivitiesContent to be uploaded Existing guidelinesContent to be uploaded Documents, linksRegulatory Decision No. 1230, 24.10.2006, Hotarirea de Guvern cu privire la aprobarea Metodologiei de analiză a impactului de reglementare şi de monitorizare a eficienţei actului de reglementare (Government Decision regarding the approval of the methodology for regulatory impact analysis and monitoring of efficiency of regulatory acts), http://old.justice.md/lex/document_rom.php?id=13539A58:AF5049D9 Policy Decision No. 33, 11.01.2007, Hotarirea de Guvern cu privire la regulile de elaborare şi cerinţele unificate faţă de documentele de politici (Government Decision regarding the rules for elaboration and unified requirements regarding policy documents), http://old.justice.md/lex/document_rom.php?id=F804220A:63677C4E Law of the Republic of Moldova on Environmental Review and Environmental Impact Assessment No. 851 of May 29, 1996,
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Latest News in the Regional Project on Ex-ante Impact AssessmentSeptember 2008 PIA Mapping available in Serbian July 2008 Download (2mb) First regional training on PIA Introductory PIA training course in Serbia PIA Mapping available in Russian Mapping of Ex-ante PIA Tools and Experiences in Europe published Steering Committee meeting in Budapest Mapping of ex-ante Impact Assessment Experiences and Tools in Europe Introduction to Impact Assessment training for policy units in Moldova
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.jpg "The Center for Policy Studies (CPS) works for better government and administration in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union through public policy teaching and research. Based at the Central European University, CPS carries out research projects, develops materials for teaching and training and in conjunction with the Open Society Institute, sponsors policy research in transition and emerging democracies. In 2008 CPS will be the implementing partner of UNDP Bratislava Regional Centre regarding the regional training on ex-ante Policy Impact Assessment in the regional project.")