An urban license to start a business project should be granted in three months, as stipulated by the legislation, but the reality is that the average term is close to eight months. The delay is extended up to 100 days in the case of publication in the Official State Gazette of a resolution on the processing of an environmental impact statement, when the maximum legal term is 10 days. These are just two examples that the big Spanish industry offers to denounce how the bureaucratic tangle complicates business initiative and can even endanger some specific investments.
Yesterday, the Alliance for the Competitiveness of the Spanish Industry presented a report, prepared by KPMG and based on the conclusions of almost 150 companies from nine industrial sectors, which includes the administrative difficulties faced by businessmen and raised a series of proposals to expedite the procedures.
In the first place, the industrial sector proposes a simplification of urban planning and environmental licenses to avoid this delay of months or even years in terms. For this, a solution that the private sector put on the table yesterday is the replacement of prior authorizations to activate a business project by responsible declarations or communications. The effective implementation of positive silence would also help streamline procedures at the start of investments, the companies consider. Both are measures already contemplated in Spanish legislation, but which are not applied effectively.
The creation of a single window for industries where they can carry out their administrative procedures in a direct and simplified manner, similar to the one that already exists in Portugal, is another of the proposals that the business sector raised in its demands.
The objective is to press to improve the current regulatory framework at the national and regional level, where the bureaucracy of the different regions also causes business tensions. The future Parliament will have to approve the industry law, a norm that was stranded by the advance of the elections and that is part of the commitments with Brussels to receive European funds. The industrial sector considers that it is time to alleviate the “enormous bureaucratic burden” of the Spanish business fabric in order to gain competitiveness and compete with other markets.
