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Which Results? Better Regulation and Institutional Politics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
Extract
How can one not applaud the renewed better regulation agenda launched by the First Vice President Timmermans? Finally this fuzzy reform field is in the hands of a strong executive politician with the authority to make substantial progress on an agenda that always appeared good on paper, but somehow did not deliver against the expectations it defined for itself. ‘Better regulation for better results’ not only promises tangible results, but it combines this with the ambition of ‘changing how we work at the European level’. This ambition should provide us – as citizens, stakeholders and scholars – with an opportunity to essentially present a scorecard concerning these results in the near future. And, indeed, experts and other stakeholders in the better regulation game do welcome the initiative.
My view on this agenda is that the promise of ‘better results’ will be hard to deliver, whereas the ambition of ‘changing how we work’ is more likely to materialize in one way or another.
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References
1 See for example the German ‘Normenkontrollrat’ in his press release from 16 May 2015, http://www.normenkontrollrat.bund.de/Webs/NKR/Content/DE/Download/2015-05-19_pm_better_regulation.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=3 (retrieved 17 June 2015).
2 European Commission ‘Better regulation for better results – An EU agenda’, Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, COM (2015) 215 final, Strasbourg, 19.5.2015.
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10 Cf. for example Fabbrini, Sergio, Which European Union?, (Cambridge University Press, 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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