Good practice:

Law 16/2015, Administrative simplification

This law regulates three general topics :
1) the minimal administrative intervention related to start-up a business establishment;
2) the OSS model to be implemented in Catalonia;
3) an information system to remove obstacles to the access to business activity;
The heterogeneity of procedures was a big challenge for the OSS project, which we have overcome, by the approval by Catalan Parliament in July 2015 of the Administrative simplification law. This law regulates the start-up procedures related to business location with prior communication or responsible statement as intervention regimes for the whole territory.
The law of simplification of 2015 particularly addresses the procedures to start up a business as well as to transform it when such economic activity is deemed innocuous or of low risk.
Specifically, the legislation seeks to clarify administrative intervention regimes related to business location or establishment and it brings in an important reduction of administrative burdens under the principles of minimum intervention and term reduction.
These procedures apply for a set of activities with no or low risk (commerce, administrative services, personal services, catering and accommodation, construction industry, storage, and so on).

To implement this good practices, the Government of Catalonia needed to collaborate with all of administrations : thit responsible units of business procedures in Government of Catalonia, with responsible units of them in municipalities and with Legal Cabinets.

This law has a big impact for business in Catalonia because these procedures apply for a set of activities with no or low risk, that reaches the seventy five per cent of the all economic activity and benefits four hundred and thirty five companies / corporations and almost one and a half million workers.
At this moment, thanks to this law, we allow that of all the administrative procedures that a company has to do to establish itself in Catalonia, 83% of them can be done electronically.

- The cross‐departmental-administrationlevel nature of the project, which affects a large number of actors in different government authorities.
- The modification process is long and tedious, given the numerous
regulations involved.
- Resistance to change in some of the units responsible.

The Administrative simplification law can be considered a good practice and is perfectly transferable to other European states or regions as they share the same model of intervention in economic activity :
- different levels of government;
- similar legal framework;
- administrative difficulties that companies have to open a business are shared in most other countries.

We think is important to support business:
a) Establishes that the prior communication or responsible statements are the general intervention regimes from to start-up an activity or establishment.
b) Brings in an important reduction of administrative burdens to start-up an activity or establishment.
c) Is a regional law and this prevents the municipalities from applying different legal frameworks to the start-up of an establishment.
d) This law has established an information system to remove obstacles to the access to business activity.