Over the past 10 years, the European Parliament has stepped up its use of evaluation to inform its law-making activities. This work has been guided in large part by the Inter-Institutional Agreement on Better Law-Making signed in 2016 by the European Parliament, the European Commission (which is the EU executive organ) and the Council of the European Union (representing the EU Member States). This article describes how evaluation is carried out in practice in the European Parliament and how it is shaped by the institutional setting. It argues that evaluation activities are inextricably linked with the law-making process, and that timing is a critical factor in evaluation uptake. Outstanding inter-institutional issues are identified and ways in which future trends and shocks can be integrated into European Parliament evaluation are described. There remain opportunities to better anticipate demands for evaluation, which could increase the time and resources available for such analysis, and for more transparency across the European Union institutions in the underlying data and evidence used to support evaluation findings.

中文翻译：

---

欧洲议会如何理解和实践评估

过去十年来，欧洲议会加强了利用评估为其立法活动提供信息。这项工作在很大程度上以欧洲议会、欧盟委员会（欧盟执行机构）和欧盟理事会（代表欧盟成员国）于 2016 年签署的《更好立法机构间协议》为指导。状态）。本文介绍了欧洲议会如何在实践中进行评估以及制度设置如何影响评估。它认为，评估活动与立法过程密不可分，而时机是评估采用的关键因素。确定了突出的机构间问题，并描述了将未来趋势和冲击纳入欧洲议会评估的方法。仍然有机会更好地预测评估需求，这可以增加可用于此类分析的时间和资源，并提高欧盟各机构用于支持评估结果的基础数据和证据的透明度。