National Regulatory Control Council

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Basic data
Title: Law establishing a
National Regulatory Control Council
Short title: Regulatory Control Council Act non-official
Abbreviation: NKRG
Type: Federal law
Scope: Federal Republic of Germany
Legal matter: Constitutional law
References : 1103-8
Issued on: August 14, 2006
( Federal Law Gazette I, p. 1866 )
Entry into force on: August 18, 2006
Last change by: Art. 1 G of March 16, 2011
( BGBl. I p. 420 )
Effective date of the
last change: 		March 22, 2011
(Art. 2 G of March 16, 2011)
GESTA : E009
Weblink: Text of the law
Please note the note on the applicable legal version.

The National Regulatory Control Council ( NKR ) is an independent advisory body to the federal government . Since 2006, it has checked the transparent and comprehensible presentation of the bureaucracy costs from information obligations and, since 2011, the total follow-up costs ( compliance costs ) in all draft laws and ordinances of the federal government. Decision-makers in government and parliament thus receive reliable information about the cost consequences of their decisions. In addition, he advises the federal government on matters of “better regulation”. Internationally, the NKR is equally committed to transparency about the follow-up costs of EU legislation. Its work is based on the NKR law passed in September 2006.

Emergence

In the coalition agreement of the grand coalition in 2005, the CDU , CSU and SPD agreed to set up a norm control council. This was implemented on June 1, 2006 with the passing of the law establishing a National Regulatory Control Council (NKRG) . Basic considerations for the draft of the law were developed by the Fachhochschule des Mittelstands in Bielefeld (including Hans-Georg Kluge ) and the Bertelsmann Foundation . The corresponding considerations were brought to the Bundestag via the North Rhine-Westphalian CDU MPs. On August 18, 2006, the law establishing a National Regulatory Control Council (NKRG) came into force.

The model is the comparable institution in the Netherlands (Adviescollege toetsing administrative burdens (Actal), German "Council for avoidance of administrative burdens"), which performs the role of an independent and neutral method guardian for measuring bureaucracy costs.

The coalition assumed that it was found in the Netherlands that state-imposed information obligations devour 3.6 percent of the gross domestic product. If in Germany, with its roughly five times higher economic power, the density of regulations on information obligations should be comparable to that in the Netherlands, German companies would have to bear around 80 billion euros due to legally established information obligations. At the same time, the Dutch have planned to reduce these costs by a quarter in four years. If this goal were to be transferred to Germany, the savings volume would be around 20 billion euros.

Organization and way of working

The NKR is only bound by the mandate established by the law establishing a National Regulatory Control Council (NKRG) and is independent in its activities.

The committee consists of ten honorary members who are appointed by the Federal President on the proposal of the Federal Government . The term of office is five years. A renewed appeal is permitted. The members are not allowed to work for public administrations or be members of parliament. The members of the NKR receive lump-sum compensation as well as reimbursement of their travel expenses (Section 3 (10) NKRG). The reimbursement of travel expenses is based on the federal travel expenses law . The lump sum compensation for the NKR chairman and his deputy is 30,000 euros, for the other members 25,000 euros per year.

Through the joint rules of procedure of the federal ministries, the NKR is involved in the legislative process like a ministry. At the latest at the start of the voting process within the federal government, draft regulations must be submitted to the NKR. The NKR also advises the departments in advance on request. The cabinet bill must be accompanied by the vote of the Regulatory Control Council, which accompanies the draft law in parliament and is published together with the version approved by the cabinet.

Tasks and competencies

The NKR is the central political steering body for all issues related to the reduction of bureaucracy and better regulation. He can u. a. check compliance with the principles of standardized administrative cost measurement:

  1. Drafts for new federal laws ,
  2. in the case of draft amendment laws, also the master laws,
  3. the drafts of the following subordinate legal and administrative regulations,
  4. Preparatory work on legal acts (framework decisions, resolutions, conventions and the related implementing measures) of the European Union and on regulations, directives and decisions of the European Community,
  5. when implementing EU law, the laws and subordinate legal and administrative provisions concerned,
  6. existing federal laws and statutory ordinances and administrative regulations based on them.

There are no competencies to examine state law.

He can hold his own hearings, commission expert opinions, submit special reports to the federal government and request administrative assistance from federal and state authorities.

Report on administrative costs

After the establishment of the NKR, initially only the administrative costs of existing laws were determined. Information and documentation obligations, for example data or statistics, that citizens or companies must transmit to authorities based on laws or ordinances are considered bureaucracy costs. With the help of the Federal Statistical Office , the Federal Government carried out an "inventory measurement" in 2006. The standard cost model (SCM) was used for this. It showed that companies in Germany were burdened with administrative costs of around 49 billion euros annually. Between 2006 and 2012 it was possible to reduce the administrative costs of the economy by 25 percent.

The Federal Government submits an annual report to the Bundestag on the experience with the methodology used to measure bureaucracy costs in a standardized manner as well as the status of the reduction in bureaucracy costs and the prognosis as to whether the goals set by the Federal Government for measuring bureaucracy costs will be achieved within the specified period.

The NKR also submits an annual report in accordance with Section 6 NKRG. This is available on his homepage. Among other things, the current status of compliance costs can be viewed here.

Reduction of follow-up costs through the "one in one out" rule

After the 25% reduction target had been implemented by 2012, there was initially no new quantitative target to reduce information requirements. In addition, from 2012 the federal government no longer only looked at bureaucracy costs, but also all follow-up costs (compliance costs). The NKR's test mandate was expanded accordingly. In autumn 2014, the NKR suggested to the German government that a 'one in one out' rule should be introduced based on the UK model. The federal government has taken up this idea and made a voluntary commitment in July 2015 not to allow compliance costs to rise any further.

'One in one out' means: If a legal regulation is passed whose follow-up costs burden the economy, an equivalent relief of the economy must be created elsewhere.

Ex post evaluation

With the step of estimating all follow-up costs of regulatory projects before their adoption, transparency (ex ante) for the legislature has been sustainably improved. However, it is just as important to check at regular intervals how laws and regulations have proven themselves in practice (ex post). Since 2013, the federal government has applied that all regulatory projects with compliance costs of more than one million euros must be put to the test after 3 to 5 years.

EU ex ante procedure

More than half of the follow-up costs in Germany originate in legal acts at EU level. The federal ministries and the NKR therefore agreed in 2016 that, in the case of EU legal acts, the lead ministry first checks whether the follow-up costs for Germany can be derived from the European Commission's estimate. If this is not the case, the ministry should send a reminder to the European Commission to improve the impact assessment or, if necessary, carry out its own assessment.

Members

Members of the Regulatory Control Council are:

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

In its first term of office, the Regulatory Control Council had equal party members. According to press reports, there were disagreements within the Regulatory Control Council about the degree of deregulation and debureaucratisation: While the CDU members wanted to deregulate as much as possible, the SPD members warned against a dismantling of standards in the field of labor law, social protection of employees and insured persons, and environmental standards. Members of the FDP and the Greens are now represented in the Regulatory Control Council.

As part of the expansion of the competences of the Regulatory Control Council in 2011, it was expanded from eight to ten members.

Former members are:

  • Wolf-Michael Catenhusen †, Parliamentary State Secretary a. D. and State Secretary a. D. in the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Member of the Bundestag from 1980 to 2002
  • Hermann Bachmaier , lawyer, former deputy chairman of the Bundestag legal committee
  • Gisela Färber , university professor for political economics at the German University for Administrative Sciences
  • Henning Kreibohm , lawyer, senior district director a. D., city treasurer a. D .; former managing partner of Nord-WestConsult
  • Sebastian Lechner , state chairman of the Young Union of Lower Saxony, graduate economist
  • Franz Schoser , former managing director of the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry
  • Johann Wittmann , former President of the Bavarian Administrative Court, Chairman of the Management and Business Academy in Munich
  • Hans Barbier †, former chairman of the Ludwig Erhard Foundation , journalist

criticism

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

The "German economy" criticizes the fact that the NKR lacks competencies and that it is limited in its advisory activities. In response to the SPD proposal, the Control Council only tests drafts of the federal government, but not those of the parliamentary groups; these make up about 30% of all designs. In addition, the 'one in one out' rule would only keep compliance costs constant, but not reduce them. In addition, implementation laws for European law would also have to be included in the 'one in one out' consideration, since the companies did not care whether the burdens originated in Brussels or Berlin.

In addition, it is criticized that a lot of bureaucracy is created again with new committees and forms in order to reduce bureaucracy (so-called bureaucratisation) and that simply measuring the bureaucracy costs does not reduce bureaucracy. The NKR is under enormous pressure to succeed and, in order to justify its existence, has to produce many statements, reports, meetings and papers (“self-preservation of the bureaucracy”). The NKR itself regards its activity as very successful and claims that its activities have saved the economy millions in costs.

Another point of criticism is that the initiator's previous history alone means that an ideological orientation in favor of the neoclassical economic model and to the detriment of Germany's status as a “ democratic and social federal state ” can be assumed to be factual and thus a pro-corporatist basic orientation can be assumed. The argument “reducing bureaucracy” can thus be misused to popularize the privatization of public institutions for services of general interest in democratically legitimized bodies with pseudo-justifications and to bring about corresponding decisions.

Regulatory Control Councils in the Länder

In Germany, only Baden-Württemberg and Saxony have a standards control council at the state level.

Other states

In addition to the Dutch Actal mentioned above, there are also comparable institutions in other countries. So was until January 2008 in the UK , the Better Regulation Commission , which then by the Better Regulation Executive has been replaced. In the US , the Paperwork Reduction Act is the legal basis for avoiding bureaucracy.

literature

  • Brüggemeier, Martin / Lenk, Klaus (Hrsg.): Reduction of bureaucracy in administrative execution. Better Regulation between Go-Government and No-Government, Berlin: edition sigma 2011, ISBN 978-3-89404-842-6

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Section 1 (2) NKRG
  2. ↑ NKRG
  3. ↑ https://www.normenkontrollrat.bund.de/Webs/NKR/DE/UeberUns/NKR_Mitglieder/lösungen.html
  4. ↑ ANNUAL REPORT 2019 of the National Regulatory Control Council. October 2019, accessed May 31, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Better Regulation Executive homepage