The Commission's task is to verify the legality of the national allocation plan while respecting the “margin for manoeuvre” granted to the Member State in the implementation of Directive 2003/87/EC in the context of the drawing up of that plan. Within this “margin of manoeuvre” Member States also have the right to choose the data and its method of evaluation (author's headnote).

In the last twenty years, the European Court of Auditors has placed increasing importance on the production of “special reports” examining the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of EU spending (the three “E”s). This institutional focus on performance audit, alongside traditional financial and compliance audit, has occurred at a time when the European Union is increasingly evaluating its own policies and programmes, under political pressure to demonstrate their added value. With performance audit, the EU's external auditors make value judgements on what was achieved through the EU budget, arguably bringing a greater political dimension to the Court as it works to deliver conclusions and recommendations meant to assist the legislature (European Parliament) in carrying out its scrutiny role and the executive (European Commission) in shaping better future policy. This raises questions about how financial accountability is interpreted, and whether it depends on the quality of audit reports or on the forums to which they are delivered, and subsequently, how they act upon them. This article analyses the factors that explain the increased use of special reports by the Court, questioning if they resemble evaluation studies. It examines their focus and impact, as well as the institutional challenges implicit in performance audit.

Regulators can avert corporate behaviour that inflicts risks on society, but is nevertheless compliant with the law. Such regulatory interventions beyond the law evoke contentious questions about their objects, legitimacy, methods, and the norms employed. No framework yet exists to analyse these questions in conjunction. Therefore, this paper proposes a typology of the extralegal frontier. The typology is based on a range of discretionary attitudes of regulators towards their enforcement mandate. This range comprises four types of regulators, with an increasingly extensive attitude: Law Enforcer, Legislative Agent, Social Broker, and Public Architect. The typology integrates diffuse scholarly insights into a coherent framework, which offers regulators and their stakeholders a starting point for reflection on interventions beyond the law.

Underground kitchens, public fridges and local meals at strangers’ homes offer an interesting and economically attractive alternatives to traditional channels of food distribution. The new practices of food sharing facilitated by technological development and using new social media combine an interest in modern engaged consumerism with a promise of more sustainable food chains and waste reduction. The main objective of this article is to map and analyse the risks and regulatory challenges posed by the variety of emerging sharing economy practices in the food sector. Drawing on the identification of the key features of sharing economy and the specificity of food in that context, this article discusses various forms, scales and motivations behind the existing food sharing initiatives. The article describes three main categories of food sharing models, namely harvest sharing, meal sharing and leftover sharing, and illustrates them with concrete examples of networks or platforms. Against this background, the article scrutinizes the major risks and challenges of food sharing, ranging from individual and public health and safety to market fragmentation. Reviewing the available regulatory options to address these risks, and juxtaposing them with the risks stemming out of regulatory intervention as such, the contribution calls for balanced approach to food sharing governance in the European Union.

The external presentation of medicinal products is fundamental in ensuring their safe use from a regulatory perspective. Indeed, the primary purpose of labeling and packaging of medicine is the clear identification of the conditions for safe use.

This section discusses issues related to risk communication across a range of publicly perceived high-risk industries (such as pharmaceuticals, nuclear, oil, etc.). It reports critically and provides analysis on risk communication as an outcome of risk research within these industries. Contributions are intended to include methods working towards the advancement of risk perception research and describe any lessons learned for successfully communicating to the public about risk.

This section aims at updating readers on the latest developments of risk-related aspects of food law at the EU level, giving information on legislation and case law on various matters, such as food safety, new diseases, animal health and welfare and food labelling.

The interaction between organised interests and the European Union institutions has been subject to increasing study and analysis in recent years, and the relevance of this increasingly important research agenda has been highlighted by political scandals and developments in 2011.

The report aims to illustrate how weakening of the statehood is reflected in the way EU and its member-states manage obesity epidemics. Private interests and behavioural turn in policy mechanisms call for more state involvement and rigorous democratic deliberation not only of nudges coming from the state, but those coming from the industry as well. The potential of nudging does not lie in the behavioural interventions it is capable of producing, but rather in the discourse it kick-started, as behavioural law and economics are paving their way into policy-making.

This contribution seeks to overcome the isolation of evaluation studies fromthe broader field of public policy analysis. Using as a case study the hybrid regulatory tool of cross compliance under the Common Agricultural Policy, the article charts the ongoing incorporation of ex ante and ex post evaluation processes over a ten year period, during which three major legislative reforms were undertaken. Anchoring its approach in the public policy work of Kingdon, the article emphasises the significance of the plurality of actors involved in the evaluation processes, the importance of timing, as well as the challenge to models of policy processes based on assumptions of rational linearity. In particular, the article demonstrates how the dis–ordering which may be observed in the stages of the policy process may equally be seen in the stages of policy appraisal. A particular focus is placed on the way in which objectives and indicators are defined and re–defined over time. The case study demonstrates that through policy appraisal, policy makers may learn what is, and what is not capable of being measured, which feeds back into the re–setting of objectives.

Today,more than ever, citizens expect value formoney, not only from their elected representatives, but also from the laws and regulations passed to protect them. As the European economy faces continued challenges and limited economic growth, citizens rely on policy-makers to encourage innovation and stimulate growth and jobs. This requires flexible legislation which fosters start-ups, encourages SMEs during those early days, but which also simultaneously maintains the high levels of consumer health and safety that they have become accustomed to.

Public accountability is also increasing – and rightly so. Citizens don't just want legislation that delivers – they alsowant transparency and open dialogue. They want decision-makers to explain why certain policy choices weremade over others, and what benefits they can expect fromsuch choices. This requirement for information must also be seen against a backdrop of increasing demands on consumers’ time and a tendency to deal in “twitterati” style soundbites. This often results in consumers feeling the need for analysis and validation of information via a third party, sometimes a journalist, sometimes anNGOor government agency.

This section is meant to give readers an insight into the emerging field of nanotechnologies and risk regulation. It informs and updates readers on the latest European and international developments in nanotechnologies and risk regulation across different sectors (e.g., chemicals, food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals) and policy areas (e.g., environmental protection, occupational health and consumer product, food and drug safety). The section analyzes how existing regulatory systems deal with new kinds of risks and reviews recent regulatory developments with a focus on how best to combine scientific freedom and technological progress with a responsible development and commercialization of nanotechnologies.

As a part of its Better Regulation agenda, the European Commission increasingly stresses the link between different types of regulatory evaluations. Predictions made by Impact Assessments (IAs) could be verified during ex–post legislative evaluations, while ex–post evaluations in turn could recommend amendments to be studied in future IAs. This article combines a dataset of 309 ex–post legislative evaluations (2000-2014) and a dataset of 225 IAs of legislative updates (2003-2014) to show how many ex–post evaluations of the Commission use IAs and vice versa. This way, it explores if the Commission's rhetoric of a ‘regulatory cycle’ holds up in practice. Building on the literature of evaluation use, we formulate the hypotheses that the timeliness, quality and focus of the IAs and evaluations are key explanations for use. Our results show that so far only ten ex–post evaluations have used IAs of EU legislation, while thirty three IAs have used ex–post legislative evaluations. Using Fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis, we find that timeliness is a necessary condition of the use of ex–post evaluations by IAs, suggesting that for the regulatory cycle to function properly, it is crucial to complete an ex–post evaluation before an IA is launched. Future research could repeat our analysis for evaluations of non–regulatory activities or study the causal mechanisms behind our findings.