The assessment must be corrected – Newspaper Kommersant No. 167 (7368) of 09/12/2022

The government may close the possibility of registration with the Ministry of Justice – and hence the entry into force – of departmental regulatory legal acts (NLA) without removing disagreements with the Ministry of Economy on the assessment of their regulatory impact (RIA). A draft White House resolution on this was published on regulation.gov.ru – in this way, the government apparatus intends to expand the “blocking” role of the RIA to prevent the enactment of acts against which government colleagues or regulated industries object. This will increase the influence of the Ministry of Economy responsible for RIA in the White House and, probably, will intensify the improvement of the assessment procedure itself – earlier experts drew attention to the gaps in its organization, most of which still remain.

The Ministry of Justice has published a draft government decree that closes the possibility for ministries and departments to put into effect regulations that their counterparts in the White House or subjects of the relevant sectors of the economy object to in substance. It is proposed to introduce into the rules for the preparation of normative legal acts of federal executive bodies and their state registration, approved by government decree No. documents that can be signed by the heads of ministries and departments and registered with the Ministry of Justice.

It should be noted that until now one of the main claims of business representatives and experts interested in RIA was the “non-blocking” nature of such an assessment – even if there were sharp objections, such documents could be put into effect. The departments that objected to such NLAs were left one opportunity to insist on their amendment even after signing, but for this it was necessary to convince the relevant vice-premier or the government commission on information and computer technologies (if it was about digitalization projects) of the need for it.

The Ministry of Justice notes that the amendments to the rules were developed in pursuance of the instructions of the Deputy Prime Minister, head of the government apparatus Dmitry Grigorenko dated August 22 (No. DG-P36-14033). It should be noted that Mr. Grigorenko himself, in an interview with Kommersant on March 15, noted that RIA would develop. “We want everyone involved in the process to get used to the fact that RIA is an objective fact that cannot be simply brushed aside. Yes, a negative conclusion does not always lead to a stop of the act. But optimization does not have to be accompanied by sudden movements,” the official said at the time. As an example of such an evolution, the official then cited the strengthening of the influence of the negative RIA in the commission on administrative reform.

As Kommersant’s source in the White House confirmed yesterday, the current project of the Ministry of Justice is part of a two-stage scheme to turn RIA into a mechanism that completely blocks regulatory legal acts that are unacceptable to economic entities. “At first, this norm was implemented as part of the reform of control and supervision – through the amendment of the provision on the subcommittee on control and supervisory activities of the government commission on administrative reform, in the fall of 2021, norms were introduced that stopped the adoption of bills and draft government resolutions with a negative ODS . Now this measure, through the project of the Ministry of Justice, applies to all legal acts, ”says the interlocutor of Kommersant. Another Kommersant source clarifies: it is critical that comments within the framework of the RIA to draft regulations are possible, but “they must all be settled with the Ministry of Economy.”

The Ministry of Justice expects that the norm will work from January 1, 2023. It will significantly increase the influence of the Ministry of Economy, but also attention to the organization of the RIA procedure itself and the settlement of disagreements based on its results. It should be noted that in the report of the Center for Management Decision Making on the work of the RIA, published a year ago (see “Kommersant” dated September 28, 2021), public administration analysts found that the positive opinion of the Ministry of Economy depends both on the results of public discussion and on the administrative weight of the development agency, and also noted the inverse relationship between the quality of the preparation of reports on RIA and their importance and the low activity of ministries in the preparation of substantive materials for assessment, and, judging by the publications on the RIA portal, there were no significant changes in this area over the year.

Oleg Sapozhkov