State regulation and regulatory impact assessment

“A lack of regulation in public procurement and a lack of consistency in application of legislative norms on the contract system make the public procurement process opaque”, is the finding of a report by the Russian Finance Ministry on the key aspects for enhancing effectiveness of budget resources in Russian constituent entities. Experts from the Regional Programmes Centre of IPAG NRU HSE have played an active role in studies, analysing the materials submitted by regional authorities on enhancing the effectiveness of public procurement and sending the corresponding section of the report to the Finance Ministry.

On 16 December Director of the RIA Centre, IPAMM NRU HSE and independent expert of the Consultative Committee for Entrepreneurship under the EEU Supervisory Panel Daniil Tsygankov addressed the round table titled “Regulatory Impact Assessment as an Integral Element of Dialogue Between Government and Business in the Eurasian Economic Commission”, held at the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. This event was organised by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in collaboration with the Moscow International Business Association (MIBAS) and the Eurasian Economic Commission, to sum up the results of the first year's use of RIA mechanisms in the EEC.

Experts from the ONF Centre for Legal Support of Journalists held a webinar, in which more than one hundred representatives of the regional and municipal media took part. Questions were addressed on legislative regulation of participation in bidding related to information coverage of the activity of authorities and real-life examples were used to explain how to counter the attempts of officials to use financial levers to apply pressure on the media. The experts noted that consideration of such complains would become one of the key areas of activity for the Centre.

Director of the Centre for Regulatory Impact Assessment of the Institute for Public Administration and Municipal Management of NRU Higher School of Economics Daniil Tsygankov held a meeting with Irkutsk Regional Authorised Representative for Entrepreneurial Rights Protection Alexei Moskalenko and representatives of the Ministry of Economic Development of Irkutsk Region.

Setting the environment levy was one of the main innovations in state regulation of waste disposal, introduced by Federal Law No. 458 of 29 December 2014. At the request of the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources, NRU HSE experts are working on the economic substantiation of the rates of the environmental levy for all groups of goods and products, waste from the use of which is subject to recycling.

On 14 May 2015 the Institute for Monitoring of Current Legislation (IMCL) under the President of Uzbekistan, in collaboration with the UN Development Programme in Uzbekistan, held a workshop as part of implementation of the project "Support to the Enhancement of Lawmaking, Rulemaking and Regulatory Impact Assessment", entitled: “Further improvement of regulatory impact assessment in Uzbekistan as an essential tool for modernization and improvement of the quality of national legislation”. The opening was marked by an address by IMDZ Director Farrukh Mukhamedov.
Daniil Tsygankov, Director of the RIA Centre at the Institute of Public and Municipal Management at the NRU Higher School of Economics shared international experience in improving the regulatory environment: practice of OECD and Eurasian Economic Union countries.

On 16 April, Director of the RIA Centre at IPAMM NRU HSE Daniil Tsygankov addressed the information workshop at the EEC – Regulatory Impact Assessment:  international experience and practical means of implementation in the Eurasian Economic Commission.

More than one half of Russian regions are nominally engaged in the formation of the institution of regulatory impact assessment (RIA). Experts from the Regulatory Impact Assessment Centre at NRU HSE have revealed that assessment specialists have not undergone the requisite further training, analysis of the consequences of regulatory innovations for business and society are systematically overlooked and funds are allocated for pilot projects and training merely based on the leftover principle. That said, a number of regions are growth points for “smart regulation”.