Although the members of the European Court of Auditors take the view that the ex-post review system set in place by the Commission supports comparisons with the systems set in place in the member states, they also identified a number of shortcomings to be corrected, in a special report dated 12 June.
Ex-post reviews are controls on legislation after its entry into force. They are the principal means of achieving the objective of regulating optimally, a priority of the Juncker Commission (see EUROPE 11890).
The auditors consider that the review system is “satisfactory implemented, managed and quality-controlled”.
However, “other kinds of reviews are not subject to the same strict quality control standards”, even though the underlying work “can be of a similar nature, duration and cost as those of evaluations”, they note.
The Court also flags up a lack of common definitions and guidelines between the EU institutions concerning review clauses. The consequence is that the “content and expected outputs are not always clear” according to the auditors, although they see the quantitative increase in review clauses in European texts as “progress”.
The authors question the rationale of the Regulatory Fitness and Performance programme (REFIT), which was set up in 2015 and aims to get rid of unnecessary bureaucratic procedures and cut costs. They criticised the lack of clarity in the criteria used by REFIT, which is made up of national representatives and experts and issued just 58 opinions on possible simplification exercises between 2015 and 2017 (see EUROPE 11890).
Finally, the report makes a number of recommendations, aiming in particular to “develop and enhance the EU's system of common inter-institutional cooperation”.
The full version of the report is available in 23 languages at: https://bit.ly/2y4croP . (Original version in French by Mathieu Solal, intern)