Simple, clearer, and less transparent? The impact of impact assessments on the EU legislative process

The European Commission is obligated to produce an impact assessment for all proposals connected to legislative initiatives mentioned in its work program and for any proposal expected to have a significant social, economic, or environmental impact. For this reason, any proposal accompanied by an impact assessment can be viewed as an important or significant piece of legislation. This presents an opportunity to examine variation in the character of the legislative process when a proposal is viewed as significant by the Commission. We leverage a novel dataset incorporating all proposals produced by the Commission since 2005 (when the use of impact assessments began in earnest) as well as information on the procedural outcomes and events connected to each proposal’s passage through the legislative process. Our findings suggest that procedural measures of conflict, such as withdrawals, second readings, or the introduction of amendments, are less likely when a proposal is accompanied by an impact assessment. These effects have grown more pronounced over time. This stands at odds with how actors are expected to behave when the stakes of legislative outcomes are higher but fits with the narrative of a growing lack of transparency in the EU’s legislative process. We also assess the effect of the content of impact assessments, by programmatically searching for references to documents produced by the Parliament and the European Council. We find that the likelihood of procedural conflict is further reduced when impact assessments include positive, substantive references to the opinions and preferences of the other institutions.