One Stop Shop in Catalonia

SMEs are at the centre stage of Catalonian public policy, since 90% of Catalan companies have fewer than 10 employees and over 50% of these are self-employed. One of the major problems for the competitiveness of SMEs is the existence of very complex, or poorly lay down, authorisation procedures, which significantly slows the access of entrepreneurs to business activity. Therefore, in this context SMEs have to fulfil multiple requirements to start business activities or to keep them going.

In Catalonia, there are three levels of public administration involved in the regulation on the economic activity: general state administration (country), regional administration (Generalitat or Government of Catalonia) and local government.

That can be summarised as follows:

The state administration is responsible for the taxation and the setting up of the companies. The first step to be followed by any person or entity wishing to develop an economic activity is to be constituted as a holder of rights and obligations, whether as a legal person (limited partnership, limited company, cooperative, …) or as an individual business (self-employed). The procedures necessary in starting a business depend on the legal form chosen. In general, the responsibility for those procedures is with the state administration, except for the tax payment of corporate operations, and the establishment of certain forms of legal entities, which are the responsibility of the regional administration.

Once the company has been established, and depending on the specific economic activity to be carried out, it must legalise its activity according to the procedures needed. In general, the set of legalisation procedures related to the economic activity is under the regional administration competence. The regulation that determines the requirements for the economic activities is significant. More than 500 different procedures necessary to legalise all sorts of activities have been identified, although a specific corporation should not apply for all of them, only those related to their field.

Finally, the legalisation of the physical establishment where the activity is carried out is under the local administration competence. There are 947 municipalities in Catalonia with different legal frameworks applying to the start-up of an establishment. The procedures identified in this field are related to health and safety standards, the environment, urban use and the works of the local conditioning. Although these procedures are few in number (17), they have a high impact on the economic activity, since they are transversal and may affect any economic activity.

The origin of the project lies in early 2011. At that time, the opening of a business was complex for several reasons:

• There were multiple actors with responsibilities for legalising the activity, with a partial view of necessary requirements. This situation made it very difficult for companies to obtain the information needed to legalise an activity because they had to go to different ‘windows’ of different levels of government and different units and agencies.
• The authorisation of intervention schemes generates administrative burdens, and associated costs. These schemes mean that the company should wait for the administrative permission; as they had made an investment, they need to obtain a return on it.
• There was heterogeneity in the treatment of economic activities between the different Catalan municipalities, which leads to uncertainty for economic operators.

Encouraging changes in the relationship model between corporations and the administration that facilitates economic activity has therefore been a priority for the Government of Catalonia. Such a new model is based on confidence in entrepreneurs, and it is focused on reducing administrative burdens and bureaucracy.

To make the new model real, Catalonia has been developing two OSS operational plans addressed to entrepreneurs: the first one covering the period 2011–2014 and the second one covering the period 2015–2017.