The European Commission recently announced its intention to mainstream the Sustainable Development Goals in its policy process, as part of its approach to implement the 2030 Agenda. This explicitly involves the EU's better regulation agenda, but the current tools and methods used in both ex ante impact assessment and ex post policy evaluation would need to be adapted to link better regulation with SDGs more effectively. More generally, this would also mean that the better regulation agenda becomes an instrument for policy coherence in EU public policy, and not only an instrument for efficiency.
In this paper, the author reflects on the changes that would be needed in governance and better regulation methods, and in the European Semester and Cohesion policy. He proposes a five-phase transition towards a policy process that is fully geared to sustainable development.
Andrea Renda is Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Regulatory Policy group at CEPS and Senior Research Fellow at Duke University’s Rethinking Regulation Program, based at the Kenan Institute for Ethics.
CEPS series: Policy Insights No. of pages: 17. CEPS Policy Insights offer analyses of a wide range of key policy questions facing Europe. As an institution, CEPS takes no position on questions of European policy. Unless otherwise indicated, the views expressed are attributable only to the author and not to any institution with which he is associated.
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