Vermindering administratieve lasten: EU-pilot start in Nederland en Denemarken (en)

Administrative costs mean the costs incurred by enterprises, the voluntary sector, public authorities and citizens in meeting legal obligations to provide information on their activities (or production), either to public authorities or to private parties. They are different from compliance costs which stem from the generic requirements of the legislation, such as costs induced by the development of new products, or processes that meet new social and environmental standards.

An important distinction must be made between information that would be collected by businesses even in the absence of the legislation and information that would not be collected without the legal provisions. The former are called administrative costs; the latter administrative burdens. The Commission's Better regulation strategy is aimed at measuring administrative costs and reducing administrative burdens. Administrative cost reduction measures are limited to streamlining information requirements and do not affect the basic design of the underlying legislation. This suggests that simplification measures to reduce administrative costs are developed more easily than measures aimed at changing the nature or the scope of the underlying legislation.

Given their nature and in light of experiences in Member States which have developed administrative cost reduction programmes, these reduction measures should be relatively straightforward to decide and implement. Such measures are therefore fundamentally different from deregulation initiatives. Administrative requirements can be further broken down into information obligations (IOs). This can best be explained as follows: a piece of legislation may contain requirements for submitting information (i.e. submitting a certificate of conformity to a public authority, on a regular basis). Each specific requirement in the legislation is defined as an IO.

In addition, a distinction must be made between information that would be collected by businesses even in the absence of the legislation and information that would not be collected without the legal provisions. The former are called administrative costs; the latter administrative burdens.

Part of the Better regulation strategy is aimed at measuring administrative costs and reducing administrative burdens.

EU, transposition of EU law or Member States: Who is responsible for administrative burden?

Only three baseline measurements carried out by Member States allow the breakdown of costs into categories A, B and C as identified below. Data from the Dutch and Danish measurements suggest that a minor part of the cost originate from transposition and implementation measures, while substantial costs are related to national and international obligations. The UK data are not yet fully available, but will be published shortly; however, the data, shared with the Commission to facilitate the piloting, seem to underline the importance of national obligations. It is evident that a considerable amount of costs originate at national level, which calls for a strong national commitment, alongside the Commission efforts, to improve the business climate.