Better regulation guidelines and tools

When the European Commission proposes new legislation or evaluates policies, the (draft) policy needs to be assessed against several criteria in line with the Better Regulation guidelines and tools. The criteria are: efficiency, effectiveness, added value, relevance, and coherence.

The five criteria are closely interrelated. To illustrate, coherence can contribute to effectiveness: when policies are better aligned, and do not hinder one another’s implementation, the achievement of the envisioned goals, results and/or impacts is more likely. In other words, effectiveness can be facilitated through enhanced coherence. While all five criteria are important for the assessment and evaluation of policies, this Handbook provides complementary guidance specifically for the assessment of coherence.

Policy coherence plays an important role in the context of impact assessments, evaluations and fitness checks ( specifically tools 11, 15, and 47). Since the available guidance in the Better Regulation guidelines and tools is limited for coherence, this page provides more specific guiding questions that can help consultants and other actors to assess policy coherence in a more systematic and comprehensive manner.

Impact assessments are used as ex-ante analyses of policy problems and the identification of possible policy responses. As part of the impact assessment, different policy options, and their effects, should be assessed. Both effects on the environment, and on other EU policy objectives and initiatives are part of the assessment.

Our guidance on the Format of the Impact Assessment report

Tool #11 “Format of the impact assessment report” outlines the elements to be included in the impact assessment. Coherence is addressed as one of the five criteria when comparing potential policy options to identify the most preferable one (Section 7 – How do the options compare). We recommend expanding and specifying the scope for assessing policy coherence by defining a relevant group of policies.

Whereas in many cases the policies selected to be part of the external coherence assessment are complementary (for example, different environmental policies), we recommend extending the group of policies to those that apply to similar geographical regions or target similar stakeholder groups and policy actors but pursue different objectives. This should ensure that potential trade-offs with other policies are identified and accounted for.

Once the group of relevant policies has been delineated, the coherence of various policy options should be assessed within this group. While tool #11 provides guidance for coherence assessment on the level of policy objectives, we recommend extending the external coherence assessment to analyze how the measures within the various policy options interact with other policies' measures and objectives.

Our guidance on setting the policy objectives

The BRGT tool #15 “How to set objectives” calls for highlighting the link between multiple objectives and potential trade-offs, for example through a graphically depicted problem tree. The tool also suggests describing the policy objectives’ contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals and indicators.

We recommend that the process of setting policy objectives explicitly takes account the internal coherence of policies. This includes assessing whether the different objectives within the same policy are synergetic or if trade-offs occur, as well as how aligned the objectives are with overarching policy ambitions. In addition to the Sustainable Development Goals, this may include objectives from the European Green Deal, Oceans Pact, Water Resilience Strategy, or other instruments.

Ex-post analyses are conducted of a single policy (evaluation) or a set of policies (fitness check) to assess their performance along five criteria: effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, coherence, and EU added value.

To support the analysis, documents from the impact assessment phase on how the policy was expected to achieve its objectives, as well as experience from the policies’ implementation can provide more information on expected and unexpected impacts of the policy.

It should be noted that coherence is strongly interrelated with the criterion of effectiveness. Our policy coherence framework does only provide guidance for the assessment of coherence, whereas relevant aspects related to effectiveness can be considered using the Better Regulation guidelines and tools.

Our guidance on evaluation criteria and questions

Tool #47 of the Better Regulation Toolbox provides relevant guiding questions on the coherence criteria. We recommend following the steps outlined in this tool and provide additional guidance and specifications.

The tool notes that an evaluation or fitness check for a given policy should assess coherence with policies in a related field that are expected to work together. In addition to assessing coherence with policies that are intended to be complementary, we recommend expanding the scope of analysis to those policies that apply to similar geographical regions or target similar stakeholder groups and policy actors. Assessing coherence across this wider group of policies should ensure that potential trade-offs with other policies are recognized and accounted for.

Moreover, the tool #47 sets out a list of guiding questions for each evaluation criterion. Coherence is described as important for single policy evaluations but is particularly relevant in fitness checks. We support the tool’s approach to assess coherence both internally (within a policy) and externally (in relation to other policies). Whereas the provided examples of coherence evaluation questions remain broad, we recommend following a more detailed coherence assessment.

We recommend dividing the coherence assessment into two parts:

1. Focus on the coherence of objectives, and
2. Analyse whether the policy measures contribute towards achieving both its own and other policy objectives.