Czech Business Today

A search engine instrument that will give access to relevant websites at national and European level was proposed by the European Commission in May as a Single Digital Gateway.

Since then, the proposal has been debated by the European Parliament and the Council which reached a general approach on this proposal on November 30^th. Business organisations have contributed their views to the EU institutions in order to ensure a proper functioning of this instrument. The aim of the proposal is to improve the access to information, online procedures and problem solving tools at European and national level at one single point. From a business point of view the success will rely on the level of quality and interconnection of e-government tools available across the EU. The quality can only be ensured if the data provided to the gateway are up-to-date and displayed in at least one additional EU language beside the national language(s) of the Member States. All existing EU and national IT tools could potentially be used for cross-border activity, therefore, each Member State should carefully verify whether the particular tool can serve for cross-border activity and that foreign entities can be allowed to use it. If a certain procedure is available in one Member State, it should also be accessible to users from other Member States.

As the Single Digital Gateway will provide non-discriminatory access to online procedures, the decision-makers should define in which cases it is necessary to have a physical presence. The situations in which Member States are exempted from the obligation to provide all steps of the procedure online should be also specified. Last but not least, for the businesses, it is key that the procedures are not burdensome and that they are asked for the information on the basis of the “once-only” principle. The principle must go hand in hand with the relevant data protection rules.