Business Registry Empowerment

Closed

A coordination among European Business Registries (BR) is a key factor for a joint continental business environment, producing administrative harmonization, transparency, legal certainty, competitiveness. Thus, national Business Registers from 26 EU Countries gave birth to EBR (European Business Register, a network to exchange experiences and to bring national BRs into harmony. Besides, the 1st EU Council Directive, March 9, 1968) mandated new Member Countries for a central BR, meeting some common requirements. Nowadays, pre-Accession Countries (e.g. Albania and Montenegro) have not tackled this issue yet and are still having a legislative debate on it; if nothing happens, after their formal accession they will have to accomplish the significant effort of connecting to an EU "standards" all at once. There it comes BRE project, by exchanging and improving experiences among Italian, Albanian and Montenegrin BRs on 3 levels: legislative (laws, actors involved, policies), operational (process management), technology (software, hardware, outputs). The Italian experience (1993-2005 reforms and electronic BR implementation) may come as a strength: "Early business registry reformers transformed a formerly paper-based business registry into a nationally centralized, one-stop, automated, web-enabled electronic system. Countries with efficient e-registries tend to have a shorter incorporation timeframes, fewer bureaucratic procedures, a lower cost of entry, a significant role in facilitating business creation. These lessons are hoped to be of help to EU new Member Countries as they embark on delivering EU-conformant e-BRs" [World Bank," Implementing Electronic Business Registry (e-BR) Services", 2007]. So, creating a transnational platform to link national BRs, the BRE project will empower Chambers of Commerce, Ministries and IT providers (policies, process management, IT instruments); but above all SMEs (cross-border partner searching, legality, competitiveness).

Medium