McCreevy seeks to subject legislation to impact assessments

INTERNAL Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy wants to scrap any draft legislation found to have a negative or negligible impact on Europe’s economy.

The former finance minister believes all proposed legislation should be subjected to impact assessments twice before becoming law. Currently impact assessments are carried out on proposals when they emerge from the Commission, but Mr McCreevy argues that by the time the Council and Parliament amend them, the original can be changed considerably.

“What I intend to do is reassess the proposals again half way through the process because very often the Commission proposes something, then it has to go through changes from the Council and the Parliament and in the end, it has become something different”, he said.