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1 Katarína Staronová ˇ I. INTRODUCTION This chapter aims to evaluate the type and quality of information on impact assessments contained in the explanatory memoranda of draft legislation adopted by the government of Slovakia. The research is based on the normative content analysis of a sample of 93 government-initiated draft laws and their explanatory memoranda that were submitted for government consideration during the period immediately after EU accession (1 May–31 December 2004). The quality of information on impact assessment is evaluated against a benchmark identified by best practice of OECD countries, and most importantly against the recent draft paper of the European Commission, ‘Next Steps’ (2004). In this sense, this chapter discusses whether the decision maker or regulator is enabled to think about legislation more open mindedly as the literature on impact assessment and better regulation suggests. The research reported here is only one part of a larger project on the comparative evaluation of quality of information on impact assessment in explanatory memoranda in Slovakia, Hungary and Estonia.2 From 1 May 2004, the eight candidate countries of Central and Eastern Europe became full members of the EU. In the course of the accession process, these countries were preparing for the EU entry, by harmonizing domestic legislation with acquis communautaire, meeting the EU entry criteria and undertaking related reforms in the public and private sector. All these countries, including Slovakia, mostly seem to have met the formal criteria for the EU accession and now they are facing regulatory management...