Qualité des études d’impact et travail parlementaire

Since 2009, the French Government is required to produce a regulatory impact assessment (RIA) of the bills introduced in the Parliament, in order to document ex-ante their legal, economic, social or environmental consequences. This article proposes a statistical analysis of a sample of thirty impact assessments published from June 2017 to August 2019, representing about half of the new bills over this period. First, the article documents the heterogeneous and often mediocre quality of impact assessments through a series of indicators, and attempts to identify the determinants of such quality. Second, the article investigates the use of RIA by parliamentarians under the current 15th legislature and shows that, while this use is limited and mostly driven by opposition parties, better RIA can definitely contribute to parliamentary work. Finally, the reasons for the relatively poor quality of RIA and ways for quality improvement are discussed.