Since 2013, France has engaged in important simplification efforts. Following waves of simplification measures, the 2017 programme “Action publique 2022” identifies administrative simplification as one of the five priority actions and ministers are tasked to develop simplification plans. France also introduced a “one-in, two-out” regulatory offsetting approach in 2017. When transposing EU legislation, the adoption of requirements going beyond those set by the EU measure is prohibited.
RIAs have to be prepared for all primary laws and major subordinate regulations and are available online. The range of impacts and costs assessed in RIA has been broadened in the past three years. The Sécrétariat Général du Gouvernement (SGG) at the Prime Minister’s Office is responsible for reviewing the quality of RIAs and provides advice and expertise on drafting regulation to authorities. For primary laws, it can return RIAs if their quality is considered insufficient. Since mid-2017 the SGG no longer provides a formal opinion on RIAs for subordinate regulations. France’s approach to ex post evaluation frequently integrates the evaluation of regulations and other policy tools. France Stratégie recently published new guidelines for policy evaluation that establishes standard evaluation techniques.
France does not require stakeholder engagement with the general public for the development of new laws, with the exception of environmental regulation. Informal consultations and consultation through consultative committees are however frequent. France could make public consultations a more cross-sectoral and systematic practice to fully reap the benefits of stakeholder engagement.
