NEWS
“Europe can do better”: Report on best practice in Member States to implement EU legislation in the least burdensome way
The High Level Group of Independent Stakeholders on Administrative Burdens published a report called: ”Europe can do more” on best practice in Member States to implement EU legislation in the least burdensome way on 21 February 2012. The report lists 74 best practice examples – including initiatives on e-government, on intelligent solutions in particular for small businesses, direct stakeholder involvement, good guidance and cross-border initiatives.
Best practice examples of relevance to IMPEL include the IPPC portal and advice and consultation given by regional authorities to companies before submission of applications in the Czech Republic, the Environment Agency’s (England & Wales) environmental permits regime and the electronic document management in Austria.
“For the area of environment as a more sector specific area a comparably high number of contributions for best practices were received as well. This might inter alia be caused by the perception of being a rather burdensome area in parts of the business community, although the results of the EU measurement of administrative burdens had shown that the administrative burdens in this area both in terms of total amount and in share of burdens across areas had been lower than expected. On the other hand this perception might also have led to increased efforts in this area to come up with the least burdensome implementation of the respective legislation. In addition, with IMPEL [authors highlight] an organisation has been established which also promotes the exchange of best practices in this area. Finally, it is an area where eGovernment solutions are gaining momentum.” Europe can do better, pp62-63.
Full details can be found on the European Commission’s Reducing Administrative Burden’s webpage.