“Regulatory guillotine” will be one of the major projects of government in 2017.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy Martina Dalić announced that the government was planning to implement the so-called “regulatory guillotine”, a comprehensive regulatory reform to create a simpler and more efficient legal framework, particularly related to the business sector, reports Večernji List on December 3, 2016.
Regulatory guillotine is being prepared for the next year, confirmed Dalić, and the goal is to reduce the over-regulation, multiplication of costs and expenses for businesses, and to simplify legislative and administrative framework for entrepreneurs and investors.
“We will introduce the assessment of the impact of new regulations on business costs, and we will create a web portal where entrepreneurs will be able to report statutory and regulatory provisions which they consider to be obstacles in doing business”, said the Deputy Prime Minister.
In 2007, when the Prime Minister was Ivo Sanader, Croatia already tried to implement regulatory guillotine, which was called “Hitrorez”, but the project was quickly abandoned. Sanader marker the start of the project with large scissors, which symbolized the cutting out of all unnecessary regulations, but just a third of recommendations was ultimately implemented.
The main consultant for regulatory guillotine was Sense Consulting. Interestingly, although the project did not succeed in Croatia, it was later sold to 17 other countries. Sense Consulting again started working on the pilot project of the guillotine during the government led by Zoran Milanović. They scanned seven sectors and determined that the optimization of laws and regulations in these areas could cut 1.4 billion kuna in annual costs to entrepreneurs.
Vedran Antoljak, the main partner at Sense Consulting, said the company a few weeks ago presented to Minister Dalić a concept of comprehensive regulatory reform which would be implemented within four years, and savings would amount to seven billion kuna a year. “It is a sophisticated reform and a new approach which we adopted after we scanned the problem areas. In four years, savings would amount to nearly 30 billion kuna”, said Antoljak. He added that Sense Consulting did not have any agreement with the government, because there no tender has been announced.
We can only hope that the new guillotine will be more efficient that the ill-fated Hitrorez.
