The CGIA Research Department has discarded them one by one and has come to the conclusion that the 365 Official Journals published in the 2018 are composed of 30.671 pages. If we had printed them all, the weight reached by this mountain of cards would be 80 kilograms and if, hypothetically, we had spread them one after the other along the road, we would have covered a distance of 452 kilometers, practically the one that elapses between Milan and Perugia.
How long would a person have spent reading all the decrees, laws, resolutions, ministerial orders and related attachments present in this flood of papers? Assuming you use 5 minutes per page, you need the beauty of 319 working days, which is over a year of uninterrupted work.
Compared to the 2017, however, the situation recorded last year has slightly improved; however, if we compare the results up to the 10 October 2019 with those matured on the same date as the 2017 and the 2018, the situation is getting worse. The 276 Official Journals published from the first of January this year until the day before yesterday, have just over a thousand pages more than the same time intervals of the last 2 years.
The coordinator of the Studies Office of the CGIA Paolo Zabeo states:
“Although challenging, for us it was a game to measure the weight of the legislative bureaucracy present in our country. But for citizens and businesses, on the other hand, dealing with laws, decrees and regulations is certainly not a leisure activity. Indeed, the jumble of rules present in Italy constitutes a jungle from which it is very difficult to disentangle. Not to mention, moreover, that the cost to businesses is appalling: according to a recent study by The European House - Ambrosetti, the entire Italian entrepreneurial system spends over 57 billions of euro a year to fulfill the obligations, permits and all the paperwork required by the public administration ".
- We are leaders in the EU in terms of number of laws
Also according to the analysis carried out by The European House - Ambrosetti, the legislative productivity of our country is unparalleled in the rest of Europe. in Italy, in fact, it is estimated that there are 160.000 standards of which 71.000 is promulgated at central level and the rest at regional and local level. In France, instead, they are 7.000, in Germany 5.500 and in the United Kingdom 3.000. However, the responsibility for this hyper-legislation can be ascribed to the failure to repeal the competing laws and to the fact that in recent decades our regulatory framework has seen an exponential increase in the use of legislative decrees which, in order to be operational, require the approval of implementing decrees. This procedure has enormously increased the regulatory production in Italy.
"Unfortunately, the time and costs of the bureaucracy - says the secretary of the CGIA Renato Mason - have become a pathology that negatively characterizes a large part of our country. In particular, our companies, being predominantly very small, require an efficient and economically advantageous public service, in which decisions are taken without delay and the recipient is able to assess the duration of the procedures with certainty. Which, unfortunately, rarely happens ”.
- The 4 January 2019 was the "blackest" day: Supplement to the OJ from 4.334 pages on ISAs
In the 2018 the maximum tip of regulatory productivity was the 12 April. On that occasion, the State Polygraphic Institute printed the Ordinary Supplement No. 18 containing the text, tables and graphs of the first tranche of the ISAs (Synthetic Tax Reliability Indices) which from this year replace the sector studies. In essence, businesses, accountants, trade associations and professionals have found themselves in the hands of a bundle of 2.967 pages that illustrates the new indicators of the first 69 economic activities with the relative territorial specificities. This year, however, the most "inauspicious" day was the January 4. The second decree containing the ISAs of other 3 economic categories was published in the ordinary Supplement No. 106. This time the file was much more substantial than the previous one: well 4.334 pages.
- What to do to improve the relationship between citizens / businesses and public offices?
First of all, the regulatory framework needs to be simplified. Try, where possible, not to overlap multiple levels of government on the same subject and, in particular, to speed up the response times of the Public Administration. With too many laws, decrees and regulations, the first to be penalized are the public officials who in the uncertainty "defend themselves" by moving decisions over time. Specifically it is necessary:
- improve quality and reduce the number of laws, analyzing their impact more closely, especially on micro and small businesses;
- periodically monitor the effects of the new measures to be able to promptly introduce corrective measures;
- consolidate the computerization of the public administration, making the sites more accessible and the contents more accessible;
- to make public databases communicate with each other to avoid duplication of requests;
- allow users to fill in the applications exclusively via computer;
- proceed and complete the standardization of the forms;
- increase the professionalism of public employees through adequate and continuous training.