REGULATORY REFORM

Bureaucracy is one of the phenomena often identified as factors hampering the growth of entrepreneurship in Poland. Too complex and obscure legal regulations are often pointed to in opinion polls as a barrier to setting up own businesses. If, by any chance, one has managed to fight their way through the maze of formalities, it often turns out that the law imposes upon entrepreneurs too many obligations causing them to incur unjustifiable costs.

Is there a solution to this problem?

Of course there is. Many European Union member states have been successful in reforming their legislation. Poland, too, has been undertaking measures towards a simplification and rationalization of the legislation process as well as a systematization of the existing laws. All these efforts are part of the
“Laws for Entrepreneurs” (“Przedsiębiorca ma prawo”) campaign as well as of the strategic priorities of the Ministry of Economy under “Better Legal Regulations” (“Lepsze regulacji prawne”).

Its main objective is to implement in Poland solutions that will ensure the creation and functioning of effective, stable and transparent economic regulations. The Regulatory Reform is carried out along two lines:

• through streamlining the process of new law creation,
• through improvement and simplification of the existing economic regulations.

At the national level the measures taken will focus on a review and simplification of economic legal regulations through identification of legal acts that create major obstacles for the growth of entrepreneurship. Considering that bureaucracy and bureaucracy-related costs prove to be a burden especially for small firms, the rule “SME First” (“Przede wszystkim MŚP”) is applied. In practice this will entail a requirement that each new bill be assessed against its impact on the SME.

Apart from simplification of the existing law the Programme involves measures aimed at improving the quality of the legislative process. The main idea is that the new laws created by the Government and Parliament should respond to socio-economic needs, and the benefits of their introduction for businesses and consumers should outweigh the implementation costs. An effective tool that can be used to achieve this aim is evaluation of regulation effects that has already been applied by the European Union member states and the USA.

Another measure aimed at improving the quality of legal regulations will be the introduction of a system for evaluation of bureaucracy costs relating to the so-called administrative burdens suffered by entrepreneurs. While combatting bureaucracy, it is necessary to assess how much effort on the part of businesses is required by the obligation to produce reports, complete forms, and generally inform the state administration about their activities.

The effective and transparent consultation process concerning documents (legal acts) at the various stages of their creation also should not be disregarded. Wide-range consultations of legal acts or other governmental documents with social partners should always constitute the basis for correct regulations, which will subsequently prove to be accepted and observed by its beneficiaries.

Better law-making is an on-going process which is to be continued…