Brussels, 31/10/2013 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission wants to stimulate reform of public administration in order to stimulate growth. This is why it is encouraging the exchange of best practice among the 28 EU member states.
In the Commission's view, the inefficiency of public administration remains a major obstacle to industrial competitiveness and economic growth in many member states, and the Commission has therefore made public administration reform one of its top five economic priorities since 2010. In order to focus on this issue more, the Commission organised a high-level conference on 29 October, which brought together political decision-makers, experts, industrialists, European Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship Antonio Tajani, European Commissioner for Interinstitutional Relations and Administration Maros Sefcovic and President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso, who made a speech about the need to reform the public sector for the sake of growth and employment. Tajani, for his part, launched a new European award for best public procurement of innovative goods and services.
Poor results. Although businesses need an efficient, cost-effective and high-quality public service where decisions are made without undue delay and where there is certainty when it comes to laws if the businesses are to prosper, the overall efficiency of public administration decreased in 2012. While 13 member states maintained their position or improved on it, 15 went backwards. Among those that did not do well were Italy, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania.
The differences between member states range from the time and cost required to start a company to the number of hours required to comply with tax return rules. While progress has been made on setting up a business in less than three days and for a maximum cost of €100, the objective has still not been reached. On average, it still takes 5.4 days and €372 to start up a business.
Furthermore, businesses face heavy administrative and taxation procedures - which mean they spend much time filling in tax returns. This can vary from 60 hours in Luxembourg to 70 hours in Ireland and to 372 hours in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria. On average among the 28 EU member states, a European business spends 193 hours per year on tax compliance procedures. As regards the contribution of public procurement to innovation and increased efficiency in the public sector, public authorities remain risk-averse and lack expertise in buying innovative goods and services. The member states that demonstrate high levels of innovation in public procurement are Denmark (48% of businesses), Cyprus (45%) and Malta (40%).
Best practice. The aim of the conference was to identify the main difficulties encountered by industry in dealing with public administration, and to exchange ideas and experience on how to overcome these difficulties. The Commission thus wants to stimulate the exchange of best practice in public administration in certain countries - for example, the benefits of e-government in Denmark and the UK; the implementation of systems aiming to increase the level of regulatory predictability and legal certainty in the Netherlands, the UK, Slovakia and Sweden; the reduction in the number of new regulations for businesses in the UK as part of its “one-in, two-out” system that has been in operation since January; and the express licence regime for retail outlets in Spain, which permits retail businesses of up to 300m2 to start operating without any local authorisation. (EH/transl.fl)