Regulations that are supportive of market openness generally abide by the following efficiency principles :
• transparency and openness of decision-making
• avoidance of unnecessary trade restrictiveness
• use of internationally harmonized measures
• streamlining conformity assessment processes
• application of competition principles.
These principles have been used as a basis for the market openness country reviews. conducted by the Trade Committee in the framework of the OECD programme on regulatory reform.
The market openness reviews examine whether and how domestic rule-making procedures and practices contribute to market openness in the given country. On the basis of the country reviews the Trade Committee has prepared a Integrating Market Openness into the Regulatory Process: Emerging Patterns in OECD Countries that draws insights of emerging patterns in trade-relevant promising regulatory practices. In addition, it has prepared a number of thematic studies that look at different regulatory disciplines and approaches (e.g. transparency and standardization) from a market openness perspective.