Switzerland
Overview and recent developments
Switzerland did not undertake any major reforms of its regulatory policy framework since 2015. RIA has to be conducted for all regulations in Switzerland. While most RIAs are simple RIAs that focus on qualitative analysis, in-depth RIAs that contain more thorough analysis and quantify impacts are conducted only for a few economically significant regulations. The Swiss Federal Audit Office reviewed the quality of the Swiss RIA framework in 2016. It found that available RIA tools are underused and that close to 30% of RIAs examined were of insufficient quality. The report recommends to further improve RIA quality by enhancing quality control mechanisms.
Stakeholders can comment on all draft primary laws and major subordinate regulations in public online consultations, which last at least 12 weeks. Early-stage stakeholder engagement on the nature of the problem and possible solutions is carried out for most regulations but is not open to the general public. Switzerland could benefit from establishing a more systematic approach to public early-stage consultations.
While a requirement for policy evaluation is enshrined in the Swiss Constitution, ex post evaluation of regulations is mandatory only for some regulations, and there are no standardised evaluation techniques to be used when conducting evaluations.
The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) issues guidelines for conducting RIA and reviews selected RIAs to provide non-public opinions on their quality. SECO also publishes reports on the level of regulatory costs and results from business perception surveys of administrative burden. The Federal Office of Justice and the Federal Chancellery’s Legal and Central Language Services are responsible for scrutinising the legal quality of draft regulation and provide advice on stakeholder engagement. The Federal Office of Justice provides guidelines for legislative drafting and stakeholder engagement processes as well as for ex post evaluation. It also manages the Federal Administration Evaluation Network, which provides a forum for exchange on evaluation inside the federal government. The extra-parliamentary commission of experts “SME Forum”, consisting mostly of entrepreneurs, operates at arm’s length from government. It scrutinises the measurement of regulatory costs and impacts on SMEs in selected RIAs and makes recommendations for improving the regulatory framework for SMEs.
Notes: The more regulatory practices as advocated in the OECD Recommendation on Regulatory Policy and Governance a country has implemented, the higher its iREG score. The indicators on stakeholder engagement for primary laws only cover those initiated by the executive (82% of all primary laws in Switzerland).
Source: Indicators of Regulatory Policy and Governance Surveys 2014 and 2017, http://oe.cd/ireg.