As has been explained in the section on compliance costs, the enactment of new laws and regulations often has time and cost implications for citizens, business and public administration.
To minimise this burden, cost estimations are carried out during the development of new regulations. This is to determine the prospective burden on business and the public and to establish whether the new law will simplify existing regulations and therefore even save costs. Ex-ante estimations, as they are called, are used to design regulatory changes such that they fulfil the intended objective while keeping the burden on business and citizens to a minimum.
Ex-ante estimations are made either by the lead ministry or by the Service Centre for Better Regulation at the Federal Statistical Office, which is commissioned by the ministry to carry out the estimation wholly or in part and/or provides advice and data. If you have questions about the estimation procedure or wish to commission the Federal Statistical Office to carry out an ex-ante estimation, please send an e-mail to erfuellungsaufwand@destatis.de.
Each estimation checks whether the new law will entail costs for citizens, business and public administration and what these costs will amount to.
Only new additional costs or cost reductions are calculated for each new regulation.
In general, new laws replace or supplement existing regulations. The aim of ex-ante estimations is to indicate whether the burden will be higher or lower than with the existing regulation. If an issue is regulated for the first time by a new law, the resulting costs will also be shown as a change from zero.
To make the expected costs publicly accessible and transparent, the results of ex-ante estimations are published as an integral part of new draft legislation. The National Regulatory Control Council checks if the estimations are correct.
Information on the estimated compliance costs of individual laws is available to interested parties at www.ondea.de (only in German) as explained in the section on the OnDEA database.