Mr. Philip Kelly:

The Commission is obliged to produce a regulatory impact assessment, RIA, on the legislative proposal. Through a scrutiny note, the Commission proposal and the relevant RIA should be available. The Commission's RIA, of course, looks at the EU-wide impacts rather than the country-by-country impacts. That falls for consideration and informs negotiation by individual member states as discussion on the draft legislative proposal goes forward but, as the Secretary General said, it is a matter for each Government Department to use RIAs as a kind of bargaining tool or a counter in the debate in EU working groups if they want to change the Commission proposal.