European impact assessment and the choice for alternative regulatory instruments

Do European impact assessments (EU IA), to emphasise that impact assessment is more than a bureaucratic tool used for internal Commission purposes onlyshow indeed such a built-in preference for alternative regulatory mechanisms? More importantly even, how is this assessment made, on the basis of what criteria and what should these criteria be if the existing ones prove to be non-satisfactory? This chapter explores these questions on the basis on which regulatory choices are made in the EU and the role that impact assessment has to play in this respect. Dealing with these issues requires an understanding of the way in which the European impact assessment regime has developed and of what the contours of this regime are now. The chapter then turn to the issue as to how the tool of IA gives hand and feet in practice to this theoretical starting point of the EUs Better Regulation policy. Keywords: alternative regulatory instruments; European impact assessments (EU IA)