OECD Home › Regulatory reform › Regulatory policy › International Regulatory Co-operation: Addressing Global Challenges
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The OECD has just released International Regulatory Co-operation: Addressing Global Challenges. This report gathers in a synthetic manner the knowledge and evidence available to date on the various mechanisms available to governments to promote regulatory co-operation, and their benefits and challenges. With the progressive emergence of an open, dynamic, globalised economy, and the intensification of global challenges pertaining to systemic risks (financial markets), the environment (air or water pollution), human health or safety, governments are increasingly seeking to ensure greater co-ordination on regulatory objectives, processes and enforcement and to eliminate unnecessary regulatory divergences and redundancies. |
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This is illustrated by the growing number of OECD Council instruments, which reached 249 in November 2011. Council instruments include both tools that are legally binding on member countries (Decisions) and non-legally binding instruments, such as Recommendations, which nevertheless display great moral force as representing the political will of member countries. These instruments cover a vast array of sectors – environment (for 29%), fiscal affairs, international investment, insurance and private pensions, competition. |
Council instruments, 1957-2012
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OECD work on international regulatory co-operation
OECD countries have acknowledged the importance of regulatory cooperation by making it Point 12 of the 2012 OECD Recommendation of the Council on Regulatory Policy and Governance:
“In developing regulatory measures, give consideration to all relevant international standards and frameworks for co-operation in the same field and, where appropriate, their likely effects on parties outside the jurisdiction”.
The OECD Regulatory Policy Division is now working on an IRC toolkit to provide guidance to countries on how to implement successfully Principle 12 of the Recommendation. The toolkit will comprise two elements: i) A typology of IRC mechanisms with relevant examples; and ii) some guiding principles to evaluate the benefits and costs of different forms of IRC and related empirical evidence. |
What is international regulatory
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The OECD has been at the forefront of regulatory policy and governance for the past decade. Through the continuous promotion of co-operation through soft law and peer review mechanisms, the OECD is in a unique position to collect the experiences of regulatory cooperation and support analytical work and guidance to countries on the range of co-operation mechanisms, their opportunities, pitfalls, benefits and costs. Ten case studies on international regulatory co-operation have been prepared in partnership with other OECD Committees and eminent academics and are now available:
For further information, please contact Jennifer Stein.
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