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Administrative Simplification:

This article discusses the importance of administrative simplification in maintaining a balance between the public interest and the needs of business. It explores the means to achieve this balance, the reduction of administrative costs, and the European Union's efforts in regulatory simplification.

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Administrative Simplification:

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  1. Administrative Simplification: An overarching policy to maintain a balance between the public interest and the needs of business Edward Donelan M.A., Dip. Eur.Law, Dip. Arb., Barrister–at–Law of the Kings Inns, Dublin and the Middle Temple, London, Senior Adviser (Principal Administrator, SIGMA/ OECD) Seminar on Administrative SimplificationAnkara 8-9 May 2008

  2. Passing laws not enough • Promoting health and safety, protecting the environment and promoting competitive behaviour not enough • Governments need to promote Better Regulation (strategies, policies, regulations, review and implementation) • Use of tools: Impact Assessment, Consultation and Administrative Simplification • Government needs to balance the public interest with the needs of business • Balance achieved, among other things, by a variety of means

  3. What are the means to achieve the balance? • A good legal and administrative environment (support for the rule of law, consistent and coherent administrative procedures) • E. government • Coherent and accessible body of laws and procedures • One stop shops • Principle: ‘Ask once use many times’ • Minimum administrative costs • Easy to understand procedures easy to follow laws.

  4. Administrative Simplification needs to balance the needs of business to do business with the needs of the public interest by: • Making sure that all written communications between government and citizens are as simple and accessible as possible. • Making sure the cost of administrative requirements (information gathering, complying with regulations) is as low as possible.

  5. Further balance achieved by awareness of the costs on business and on the administration EU rules mainly impose two types of costs on business: substantive costs and administrative costs. • Substantive costs are induced by obligations for businesses to change their products and/or production processes. • Administrative costs are defined as costs incurred by businesses in meeting obligations to provide information on their activities or production, either to public authorities or to private parties. Administrative simplification is concerned with reducing administrative costs and making it easer to deal with government obligations.

  6. What is the EU doing about administrative costs and burdens? A strategy for regulatory simplification was launched by the EU in 2005. The strategy mirrors developments that have taken place in many OECD countries and is well documented in: From Smart Tape to Red Tape: Administrative Simplification in OECD countries, OECD, 2003 The priorities for any simplification programmes are: • Making sure that all written communications between government and citizens are as simple and accessible as possible. • Making sure the cost of administrative requirements (information gathering, complying with regulations) is as low as possible.

  7. The European Commission’s approach to simplification • Repeal of regulations that are no longer of practical utility. • Codification of laws • Recasting of laws so that they can be more easily read. 2005 Communication on Simplification: A strategy for the Simplification of the Regulatory Environment COM (2005) Final : Two approaches – • A rolling programme anchored in stakeholders’ practical experience • An approach based on continuous in –depth sectoral assessment The most recent approach has also focussed on costs.

  8. Savings of €500m were made in 2007 thanks to the action programme launched a year ago by the European Commission with the aim of cutting administrative burden by 25% by 2012. • The action programme focuses on 40 EU laws reckoned to account for some 80% of European red tape. The Commission's priority is to free companies from reporting requirements that create unnecessary paperwork.

  9. A second progress report shows that the strategy for administrative simplification is well underway. • Main results so far include • the creation of the European single payments area and • new computerised customs procedures. Both are expected to save the EU economy billions of Euros a year. • The process will intensify in the following years. Further savings of €800m are expected before long. Company law is currently being reviewed to reduce administrative requirements, and simplified rules on public subsidies (state aid) are in the pipeline. • An independent group of high-level experts gives the Commission frank advice on better regulation and cutting red tape. The group is chaired by Edmund Stoiber, former minister president of Bavaria.

  10. Simplification: 5000 pages of the Official Journal removed - Since October 2005, 300 legal acts representing about 5000 pages of the Official Journal have been removed from the roughly 95,000 pages of the Community acquis as a result of the simplification rolling programme under way states. • The simplification rolling programme now comprises about 164 initiatives covering all policy areas. Since 2005, the Commission has taken action or proposed to remove about 2500 obsolete acts from the acquis.

  11. Examples • 50 Council acts removed and more than 650 legal articles reduced to 200 in view of simplifying drastically the 21 Common Market Organisations of the Common Agricultural Policy into a single scheme to streamline and simplify the Common Agricultural Policy • A paperless customs will be the result of the e-customs decisionwhich will create a European electronic system for data exchange between public authorities and companies. • The ground-breaking revision of EU insurance law (Solvency II) will mean replacing 14 existing directives with a single directive, • More than 2000 pages of EU legislation will be deleted by bringing all three modes of inland transport of dangerous goods (road, rail and inland waterways) into one single piece of legislation.

  12. Conclusions • Making laws not enough • Laws need to be made in a framework of Better Regulation • Better Regulation includes: Administrative simplification • Administrative simplification necessitates imposing as few costs and burdens and • Making administrative procedures and laws as simple as practicable • ED 13/04/08

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