Policy & legislation

All lawyers can be expected to know the law, but only few contribute to its creation. Since its establishment, Timelex has provided legal and policy support to governments, legislators and policy developers, and has contributed to the genesis and evolution of key legislation in its field of activity. Timelex identifies legal challenges, proposes and evaluates the options to address them, and provides draft legislation. Timelex is not a lobbying organisation, but provides its analysis from a position of neutrality and objectivity. In this way, Timelex not only knows the law, but shapes it.

POLICY DEVELOPMENT

Before regulatory choices can be made, policies must be established. Ideally, policies should be based on facts, identifying first the problems to be resolved, then the available options, and weighing the impacts of the options before making an informed decision.

Timelex provides support on all of these steps, and has experience in:

• Impact assessments, both ex post (in relation to existing law) and ex ante (in relation to potential future law)
• Legal and policy data collection on national laws, policies, and case law, both within the EU and outside of it
• Comparative assessment of laws and policies, in order to determine commonalities, differences and gaps
• Common assessment methodologies for laws and policies, including SWOT analysis and PESTEL assessment
• Drafting and identifying regulatory and non-regulatory policy options
• Regulatory fitness checks and application of the Better Regulation guidelines

Timelex has provided these services nationally, at the EU level, and internationally, and has strong familiarity with the complexities and challenges of cross border policy assessment.

The policy areas in which Timelex has applied these services include, but are not limited to:

• Data protection and e-Privacy, contributing to the GDPR and the proposed e-Privacy Regulation, leading several adequacy assessments, and advising the European Parliament in relation to the data protection implications of Brexit
• Electronic identification and trust services (including electronic signatures), contributing to the eIDAS Regulation
• E-Commerce law and e-commerce policies, contributing to legislation and model contracts both inside and outside the EU
• Public sector data and open data, contributing to the PSI Directives, national implementing legislation and model licensing contracts
• Various e-government topics, contributing to the Public Procurement Directives, the Single Digital Gateway Regulation (SDGR) and the Services Directive
• E-Health, cross border health care and mobile health applications
• Cloud computing
• Network and Information Security, contributing to the Cybersecurity Act
• Data ownership and cross border data flows, contributing to the Regulation on the free flow of data

LEGISLATIVE AND REGULATORY DEVELOPMENT

Policies ultimately may need to be translated into legislation. Any regulatory intervention must be effective and efficient, and suited to the objectives chosen by the legislator. In some cases, drafting legislation can be highly complex, requiring a strong knowledge of the underlying sector or topic, of any related legislative initiatives, and of course of the regulatory process itself.

Timelex has assisted legislators at the national, European and international level in drafting, amending and implementing legislation. Its efforts include:

• The initial drafting of legislation on the basis of selected policy goals
• Drafting accompanying memos to explain the objectives and philosophy of the proposal
• Accompanying the regulatory process, including by drafting amendments and responding to questions during the development of regulatory proposals
• Drafting implementing laws, such as national or regional laws implementing or complementing European Directives
• Drafting secondary legislation, such as implementing acts or Royal Decrees
• Drafting guidelines or model contracts to facilitate the application of the law in practice

Timelex has drafted legislation on many topics, including data protection, electronic identification, trust services (including electronic signatures), public sector information, open data, e-government, electronic communication, e-commerce, liability of internet intermediaries, accessibility of websites and mobile apps, and public procurement.