International appreciation for tackling of administrative burdens

The Dutch way of tackling administrative burdens should be adopted internationally. The Vice-President of the European Commission Günter Verheugen (Enterprises and Industry) spoke at the international congress ‘Challenges on cutting red tape’ in Rotterdam highly of the Dutch endeavours to curtail bureaucracy and also called the Netherlands a trendsetter in many respects in this field. The World Bank and the OECD also expressed their appreciation of the ‘Dutch model’ referring in this context to the term ‘world leading.’

At the request of the former cabinet, the OECD and the World Bank audited the tackling of administrative burdens in the Netherlands. In the report to that end, the World Bank states that the way of tackling has worked well up to now due to the management by the Ministry of Finance and the tie-up with the budget cycle, the clear target of 25% less administrative burdens, a strong central management, the political commitment of all the various parties and the presence of an independent supervisory organ (ACTAL). The World Bank advised to maintain this course of action and in addition to search for a broadening and deepening of the tackling of the administrative burdens by an increasing focus on the opportunities provided by ICT, to continue to put pressure on burdens coming from the local authorities and Europe and to decrease the intrinsic costs entrepreneurs incur in order to comply with legislation.

This is the Dutch Government’s international website on administrative burdens (‘red tape’) imposed on businesses. Primary goal of this website is to inform our international network about the Dutch approach to structurally reduce these burdens by a quarter in 2007.

This website provides all relevant information on the Dutch red tape amount, its origin and the red tape reduction programme (on a national and European level).

The corporate sector is closely involved in the realisation of the plans. The Dutch approach to reduce red tape for businesses fits into a broader framework in which burdensome, irritating and conflicting regulation for companies and citizens are addressed.

What are exactly administrative burdens? Businesses are confronted on a daily basis with many regulations imposed by the Government. Complying with them usually involves compliance costs. One element of these compliance costs is the administrative burden.
Administrative burdens are the costs that the corporate sector must make in order to comply with the information obligations resulting from Government-imposed legislation and regulations. Other compliance costs are financial and content-related. Dutch Cabinet letter October 2006: “We want to get rid of this too …”

Conference: ‘Challenges on Cutting Red Tape’

A conference on everything we always wanted to know about cutting red tape, but were afraid to ask...
 
The aim of the conference is to share the lessons learned in the last couple of years on reducing administrative burdens and to discuss the future (international) challenges on regulatory reform. Accordingly the participants of the conference will take a look at the instruments available to meet these challenges.

The conference starts with a presentation by the OECD and the World Bank Group on the outcome of their reviews on the Dutch approach to reduce administrative burdens for businesses. This is followed by a presentation of the Vice-president of the European Commission Mr. Verheugen regarding the commission’s ambitions to reduce administrative burdens stemming from EU legislation. Subsequently there will be a discussion between key-note speakers and the audience about future challenges on (inter)national regulatory reform.

The conference took place on the 1st of March in Rotterdam.