Tax returns, illustartive stock photo (source: Sme)
The need to obtain paper documents from many state bodies should be done away with as of May 1, 2018, Vice Prime Minister for Investments and Informatisation Peter Pellegrini (Smer) announced on November 2. After analysing the respective legislation, Pellegrini’s office has prepared an amendment to the law on administrative proceedings that should bring about the change. The amendment has just been sent for interdepartmental review. Pellegrini’s office expects it to bring savings of as much as €3.5 million to the public and companies in fees, as well as saving 620,000 hours spent obtaining the documents.
“Many registers work perfectly already, and we draw our data from them,” said Pellegrini as cited by the TASR newswire. “In part, thanks to this, we can introduce the first of a number of radical measures that in my opinion will be followed by several others in further waves this year and in the next few years.”
This way the office of the vice prime minister joined the initiative of Economy Minister Peter Žiga to reduce the red tape for businesses. The aim of the amendment to the law on administrative proceedings is to ban offices and other public institutions in Slovakia from demanding that people and firms should bring them extracts from the Commercial Register, extracts from ownership lists, extracts from the Register of Self-employed Individuals, or copies of criminal records.
“All these data are currently available to the state,” said Pellegrini.
The amendment will alter over 147 laws, 68 directives, eight measures and 12 government regulations.
“This step is very important in order to eliminate pointless red tape and improve the business environment,” said Žiga. “We tested it during our latest EU fund calls, when ministry clerks obtained plenty of data from available registers, and applicants did not have to provide confirmation. We want to show entrepreneurs that the state can significantly help them with its proactive attitude. The Economy Ministry plans to introduce the second anti-bureaucratic package as early as next year.”
