Switzerland did not undertake any major reforms of its regulatory policy framework since 2015. RIA has to be conducted for all regulations in Switzerland. While most RIAs are simple RIAs that focus on qualitative analysis, in-depth RIAs that contain more thorough analysis and quantify impacts are conducted only for a few economically significant regulations. The Swiss Federal Audit Office reviewed the quality of the Swiss RIA framework in 2016. It found that available RIA tools are underused and that close to 30% of RIAs examined were of insufficient quality. The report recommends to further improve RIA quality by enhancing quality control mechanisms.
Stakeholders can comment on all draft primary laws and major subordinate regulations in public online consultations, which last at least 12 weeks. Early-stage stakeholder engagement on the nature of the problem and possible solutions is carried out for most regulations but is not open to the general public. Switzerland could benefit from establishing a more systematic approach to public early-stage consultations.
While a requirement for policy evaluation is enshrined in the Swiss Constitution, ex post evaluation of regulations is mandatory only for some regulations, and there are no standardised evaluation techniques to be used when conducting evaluations.
