The fight against bureaucracy is one of the main pillars of the Community of Madrid’s strategy to boost the economy. And it’s no wonder: according to the 2022 Business Barometer by the Institute of Foreign Trade, Spain’s regulatory environment is one of the worst-rated aspects for foreign companies with headquarters in our country. The most critical evaluation, as in previous years, is the bureaucratic burden on the functioning of the company.
For this reason, the Community of Madrid focuses much of its economic strategy on fighting the bureaucratic burdens that so many companies face on a day-to-day basis, dragging down their operations and even discouraging investment or continuity. Two years ago, the Goverment approved an “open line against hyper-regulation” , an online site through which entrepreneurs can contact the Public Administration to report the administrative problems their businesses have encountered.
It is an online site where investors can describe the barriers they encounter in the regulations that govern their activity and how they affect the launch of their projects. They can also provide options for improvement to study their feasibility and analyze, in coordination with the different departments of the Community of Madrid, how to modify or eliminate any regulations that may have become obsolete.
Since then, hundreds of companies have contacted the Community of Madrid through this portal. As a direct result of these consultations, the Community of Madrid has approved 205 regulatory improvement, administrative simplification, and regulatory repeal reforms in the areas of Environment and Housing, Health, Economy and Employment, Social Policies, Culture, Tourism and Sports, Transport and Infrastructure, Education and Universities, Presidency, Justice and Interior, and Local Administration. Of these, 78% have resulted in regulatory improvement and the rest have translated into bureaucratic simplification.
In this regard, it is worth noting the importance of the approval of the Omnibus Law last December, which aims to give greater dynamism to economic activity, adapt legislation and modernize the Administration. This is complemented by the Investment Accelerator, which speeds up projects of special interest to the region.
In the environmental area of regulations, initiatives such as the substitution of the authorization to occupy temporary livestock routes for recreational or sports activities with a responsible declaration, responsible declarations in pruning activities on private land, adaptation of waste and contaminated soil regulations to basic state legislation, and the substitution of obsolete regulations regarding the management of batteries and accumulators stand out.
Other measures have been the elimination of the need for supervision or reports for municipal works contracts included in the regional program of investments and services; or that agents from other regions can carry out their activity in the Community without additional requirements (Open Market Law).
The flexibility of the regime for work cooperatives has also been approved; administrative burdens for obtaining complaint forms have been reduced; unnecessary administrative procedures have been eliminated for artisanal activities; freedom to choose Employment Offices has been granted; a new virtual office for taxpayers has been created; terrace opening hours have been extended, and processing and resolution deadlines for the Minimum Insertion Income procedure have been reduced, among others.