A social multi-criteria framework for ex-ante impact assessment

European Commission's current practice of Impact Assessment (IA) considers three main objectives i.e. efficiency, effectiveness (including proportionality) and coherence and it is based on the assessment of various broad impacts such as economic, environmental and social (including distribution of costs and benefits among social actors) ones. There is no doubt that IA is multidimensional in nature and as a consequence, multi-criteria evaluation (MCE), and in particular social multi-criteria evaluation (SMCE), which has been explicitly designed for public policy, can be a very useful methodological and operational framework. SMCE tries to integrate different scientific approaches with social actors' preferences, thus being a consistent and transparent framework for both inter-disciplinarity and public participation. This report aims at presenting: - A methodological framework where the hierarchical structure of the option comparison step of a typical ex-ante IA (including dimensions, objectives and evaluation criteria) is clarified as much as possible by means of well-established concepts in the decision theory literature. This might help in increasing the degree of homogeneity across IA studies. - A measurement framework where 1. the various criterion scores can assess impacts by using both quantitative (e.g. as result of simulation models) and qualitative (e.g. results of participatory techniques) information, and 2. the mathematical aggregation rule guarantees consistency and transparency of results. - An illustrative example dealing with a recent IA on modernising VAT for cross-border B2C e-Commerce.