Laki ei ole ilmaishyödyke – Sääntelyn kustannusten ja niiden hillitsemisen tarkastelua
Avainsanat:
lainsäädännön kustannukset, paremman sääntelyn toiminta, lainsäädännön vaikutusten ja toimivuuden arviointiAbstrakti
Lakimies-aikakauskirjan parhaan kirjoituksen palkinto 2016
Legislation is not a free good
In many OECD countries the focus of the various so-called Better Regulation activities has, from 2010 onwards, turned more and more towards reducing the cost of regulation. This turn is due to two background factors: The growing volume of regulation and an insight being established within governmental circles that regulation may on several occasions not only provide benefits, but also be harmful for economic activities by bringing about large or unnecessary costs. The current informational basis concerning the effects of regulation on economic activities is, however, in many respects still uncertain or inadequate.
Initially, the article focuses on the various measures which countries in the forefront of Better Regulation activities have utilised in order to decrease, or at least sufficiently control, the costs that new legislative activities might cause to various societal actors, such as businesses, private persons or the administration. The analysis is mainly based on examples and experiences from Australia, the UK and Germany.
In the second section, the article describes those Better Regulation activities whose purpose is to deregulate or at least to streamline the total volume of regulation currently in force. From a European viewpoint, the activities of the EU, in particular its REFIT program (Regulatory Fitness and Performance Programme), are in this respect an interesting example which may even become some kind of model for Member States when they develop systems to evaluate and later to improve the quality of the mass of regulations in force. Other examples described in this section are, among others, Australia and the United States.
In the final section of the article, the observations made in the preceding sections are discussed and evaluated. Even if some governments have already issued information about fairly big reductions, when it comes to the cost of regulation in particular on businesses, no proper analysis has so far been conducted on the true impact of those governmental measures on various actors and on how they relate to the goal of the legislation in question. Nonetheless, it seems clear that improving the informational basis regarding the cost of regulation – and in particular costs related to the benefits of that regulation – would have many merits when improving the quality of legislation and the economic-societal environment it provides to citizens and businesses. At the same time, it is likely that various conflicts and disagreements between societal actors and interest groups will arise, when genuinely trying to reduce the volume or cost of regulation by governmental activities.
