The Commission’s Impact Assessment process : handling the external dimension of sustainability.

This chapter focuses on mechanisms of ex ante policy evaluation related to sustainable development objectives, such as the Impact Assessment and Sustainability Impact Assessment tools, and stresses the failure of these mechanisms to evolve into truly integrated assessment tools due to the weak incorporation of external dimensions of sustainability into these evaluation schemes when applied to policy proposals which are regarded as internal in nature. We analyse the shift from using Impact Assessment as a key tool for dovetailing the different policy agendas (e.g. competitiveness with sustainable development) towards a more prudent – and less ambitious – interpretation of Impact Assessment as a means for the evaluation of controversial impacts of individual policy proposals. Finally, we explore a double weakness: the unambitious interpretation of ‘external dimensions’ within the sustainable development discourse, and the weak incorporation of these dimensions into concrete policies. Facing the choice between an ambitious but weak integrated assessment method which tends to weaken the environmental agenda and a less ambitious, but well-performing simple regulatory check, we argue in favour of the latter.

Bauler T. (2006), The Commission’s Impact Assessment process : handling the external dimension of sustainability. In : Pallemaerts M., Azmanova A. (eds), The EU and Sustainable Development : internal and external dimensions. VUB – Press, Brussels, Belgium.