By the year 2012 the EU Commission wants to reduce administrative burdens on companies by 25%. In a presentation on Wednesday the Commission introduced an action plan which aims at reducing reporting requirements in 13 selected areas. These include issues like company law, employment relationships, fiscal law, statistics, agriculture and transportation.
In a first step the new initiative is to examine the costs which accumulate in these selected areas due to administrative burdens. Furthermore, by means of a summary procedure the Commission is to propose ten measures on the basis of which administrative costs can be reduced. These measures may then be adopted on the occasion of the meeting of the EU Council in March. By these measures alone the burdens on companies could be reduced at once by 1.3 billion Euros per year.
The package of measures includes less strict requirements on obtaining export refunds with regard to agricultural products, the introduction of an electronic register for the data exchange in transportation and the abolition of regulations which oblige forwarders to present customs related documents within the EU.
More detailed information about these immediate measures and the 13 affected areas is available on the internet. 