From Nothing to Too Much: Regulatory Reform in Greece

Abstract

After many years of an impasse in attempts to introduce Regulatory Impact Assessment to Greece the Greek Prime Minister announced in July of 2006 the introduction of a very ambitious Integrated Impact Assessment on the economy, the society and the environment. The model presented was at the same time ambitious and unsophisticated with some obvious methodological problems. To make the situation worse, an impact assessment analysis should accompany every law and every regulation of every Ministry and every Region although the experts who can undertake this task in Greece are very few. The first RIAs (which are not publicly available) proved to be of a very low quality and extremely simplistic. The introduction of such a system in Greece is certainly a positive step, however it should be limited (at least in the initial stage) to an ex ante and an ex post assessment only of the major laws and regulations. The whole procedure should be controlled and supervised by a central regulatory watchdog with veto power. But even for this less ambitious system to work, cultural change is necessary which includes the creation of a pool of experts.

Keywords: Regulatory Reform, Better Regulation, Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA), Greece

JEL Classification: K23, L51, R38