Time to give environmental and other societal impacts a complete assessment

T&E supports an integrated impact assessment that seeks to examine impacts across the economic, environmental and social areas. In July 2014, the European Commission opened a public consultation on the revision of its impact assessment guidelines and asked stakeholders to respond to a questionnaire. In its response, T&E stated its concern that economic impacts – typically on an affected industry – are often assessed in impressive detail while the assessment of environmental and other societal impacts benefits is often incomplete.