Der NKR
Find out more about the National Regulatory Control Council
Central Topics
The NKR’s mandate includes verifying whether and to what extent the Federal Ministries have described the cost implications of the laws, regulations and administrative provisions drafted by them. The most important category of costs arising from new legislation is compliance costs. Compliance costs refer to the measurable time expenditure and monetary costs either incurred or saved by citizens, business and public administration as a direct result of a new regulation. They can be either one-off or recurring costs and savings.
As of January 2023, federal ministries must ensure that all draft legislation meets the demands of the digital transformation. Since then, the NKR has been examining the extent to which the digital possibilities have been considered when drafting a law. The NKR's Digitalchecks are publicly available in its statements. The decision of the German Bundestag in mid-2022 to introduce a systematic digital-readiness check is therefore an important milestone.
The way in which laws are made today is often no longer up to date. Legislative texts are drafted down to the last detail before any thought has been given to how the actual goal of the law can best be achieved. Questions of practicability and user orientation are the most important cornerstones of better regulation. Those affected have the necessary knowledge about how rules work in practice, what dependencies there are on other requirements, on practical enforcement issues and technical possibilities. Involving this knowledge as early as possible in the legislative process is the real challenge.