Can You Teach an Old Public Law System New Tricks? The Greek Experience on Good Regulation: From Parody to Tragedy Without (Yet) a Deus Ex Machina

In Greece, good regulation instruments were up to recently, totally ignored; traditional, sector-oriented forms of regulatory assessment have proved extremely poor and inadequate. Eventually, impact assessment has been introduced also in the Greek legal system in a 2006 PM Circular. This initiative, although with many defects, has established a new RIA system, and was further elaborated in the 2009 guidelines setting an integrated impact assessment methodology before being reestablished in Law 4048/2012. Setting this RIA system in practice has so far proved a “parody,” mainly due to the extremely poor quality of RIA reports on legislation already introduced, but also due to a series of failures in adjusting this mechanism to the Greek Administration and vice-versa. Furthermore, this system lacks clauses safeguarding transparency and monitoring. To adapt RIA mechanism to the Greek legal order and make it more effective, a public law approach seems essential, albeit difficult. RIA should therefore be converted in yet another legal prerequisite for public action falling under the scope of judicial review by the competent administrative courts.