Estonia did not make any major changes to its regulatory framework in the past three years. In line with the “Guidelines for development of legislative policy until 2018” adopted in 2012, preliminary RIAs are prepared for all primary laws and selected subordinate regulations. For regulations with significant impacts, in-depth RIAs are conducted.
Estonia places a strong focus on accessibility and transparency of regulatory policy by making use of online tools. The online information system EIS tracks all legislative developments and makes available RIAs. Estonia currently works on an improved version of EIS. The interactive central website osale.ee displays all ongoing public consultations, but is not widely used and linkages to EIS could be strengthened. Later-stage consultation is conducted for all regulations. Public online consultations to inform officials about the nature of the policy problem and identify policy options are conducted in some cases.
Ex post evaluation is mandatory for some regulations since 2012. The completion of first evaluations is planned for 2018. Estonia could support the implementation of its ex post evaluation requirements by embedding stronger capacity to scrutinise the quality of ex post evaluations into the existing framework.
