Services constitute Europe's and Spain's most important sector in economic and employment terms, and they also comprise the sector that has experienced the fastest growth in recent years. Indeed, service sector activities represent 68% of Spain's GDP, and they are an important engine of growth and job creation.
Within this context, the process initiated by transposition of the Directive represents
an opportunity for Spain to modernise its legislation, increase transparency and undertake an ambitions programme of administrative simplification. This will allow us:
- To position ourselves among the countries with the best regulatory framework, so as to stimulate business creation.
- To mitigate the upward pressure of services on general level of prices in Spain.
- To improve the competitiveness of the Spanish economy as a whole, bearing in mind the importance of services as inputs to all businesses.
- To stimuate job creation, given that most new jobs are created in the service sector.
- To promote Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in particular, which account for 99% of the companies in this sector and which are especially affected by the excess of administrative burdens and disproportionate obstacles to the exercise of their business.
More specifically, the main implications for Spain of the transposition of the directive will be the following:
- The elimination barriers that unfairly restrict the start-up of service activities and that prevent or delay new entrepreneurial projects and the creation of employment.
- Those administrative authorisations that are not justified for reasons of general interest or that are unnecessary for these purposes will be eliminated. This means that, in general, prior administrative authorisation processes (which entail delays) will be replaced by declarations or notifications that can subsequently be monitored by the competent public authorities.
- Requisites that are discriminatory or disproportionate to their purpose will be eliminated.
- Other administrative burdens for service providers will be reduced: recording in registries, renewal of authorisations, duplication of procedures for opening new establishments.
- Major stimulus to the process of simplifying the procedures that have to be carried out by service providers, taking advantage of the potential of information technologies.
- Through the Single Point of Contact, any citizen will be able to obtain information and perform the necessary procedures to start up a service activity on-line, whether wishing to establish its base in Spain or any country of the EU.
- This includes procedures at all levels of the Public Administrations (State, Autonomous and Local), which must be coordinated with one another (and with the Administrations of other States) to make the formalities simpler for citizens.
- Only those procedures that, due to their nature, require physical verification will be excluded (such as accreditation of legal personality before a notary or the prior inspection of premises, when necessary).
- Strengthening of the rights and protection of users of services.
- It guarantees that any service user has access to the services offered by any provider in the EU, under non-discriminatory conditions.
- It obliges service providers to act in a transparent way. The provider must supply users with information about the provider himself (name, legal form, address and authorisation, if applicable) and about the conditions under which the service is provided (features of the offered service, price, guaranties).
- Administrations must inform and assist service users so that they can lodge any complaints with the competent authorities in the event of litigation with service providers, regardless of the country where they are located.
- Opportunity for Spanish export companies, given that our community partners are going to carry out a similar process of simplifying procedures and reducing unnecessary or unfair obstacles. This opportunity will be of greatest significance for SMEs, as it will improve their ability to adapt to the different regulatory environments of countries of the European Union.