Internal market, industry, entrepreneurship, SMEs and statistics

← Internal market, industry, entrepreneurship, SMEs and statistics

Single digital gateway

Overall state of play:

Commission proposal: adopted 2 May 2017, COM(2017)256
Legal act: adopted on 2 October 2018: Regulation (EU) 2018/1724; entry into force on 11 December 2018.

State of play, main conclusions, outlook

The single digital gateway (SDG) Regulation helps citizens and businesses to find information about rules and procedures and locate assistance services through one user-friendly interface in a language they can understand. Its public interface is the Your Europe portal including its upgraded search function, reporting of Single Market obstacles and the new assistance service finder. The Points of Single Contact are one of the assistance services integrated in the SDG (aside of six other mandatory ones from Annex III of the SDGR). As such they have to comply will all quality criteria of the regulation and they are findable through Your Europe.

From 2023 onwards Europeans will also be able to do online and across borders much of the "paperwork" needed for their activities. In addition, they will be able to ask authorities in different EU countries to transfer documents and other evidence needed for key administrative procedures (under the Annex II) between authorities instead of citizens and businesses having to provide them manually. This will be possible through the Once-only Technical System which is built by the Commission in very close cooperation with the Member States.

Providing these services will facilitate the access of businesses, including SMEs, to the Single Market by significantly reducing the transaction costs for providing services or selling goods in other Member States. Better access to the Single Market will lead to greater economies of scale and scope and thus enhanced competitiveness and cost efficiencies.

Estimated savings and benefits

Savings for businesses are estimated to be EUR 11 – 55 billion per year and 855 000 hours per year for citizens.

REFIT Platform

The REFIT Platform opinion on Points of Single Contact recommends the establishment of a single entry point for business in each Member State to assist companies operating in the Single Market, it supports establishing minimum criteria for the performance of Points of Single Contact and to integrate this exercise into the preparations of the Single Digital Gateway proposal and align it with other relevant initiatives such as the services passport.

The opinion informed the Commission Proposal on the Single Digital Gateway.

State of Play

Commission Proposal: COM(2017)256, adopted by the Commission on 2 May 2017

Which objective(s) did the Commission pursue?

The proposal aimed at:

• The establishment of a single entry point for business in each Member State to assist companies in finding relevant information to operate in the Single Market.

• Ensuring full coverage of information citizens and businesses need;

• Improving awareness of services available;

• Eliminating or overcome duplication and complexity, improve findability;

• Improving quality across the board for all information and assistance services, and for procedures;

• Ensuring that EU citizens and businesses can complete the most important part of their interactions with the administration online;

• Making all information and procedures fully accessible for non-national citizens and businesses;

• Getting a more systematic overview of obstacles encountered by cross-border users

Estimated savings and benefits

Savings for businesses are estimated to be EUR 11 – 55 billion per year, and 855 000 hours per year for citizens.

State of Play:

Legal act: Adopted on 2 October 2018 - Regulation (EU) 2018/1724

Outcome of legislative procedure

The Council was positive on the general features of the proposed regulation, but extended the deadlines for implementing the online procedures.

The European Parliament increased the level of ambition with an extended list of information areas and online procedures. However, it also diluted the procedure of business registration procedure, undermining the role of the gateway in facilitating the establishment of a business in another Member State. The Parliament decided that 'Your Europe' will be the name of the gateway, and added additional safeguards for data protection and proposed to apply web accessibility requirements to the Commission (already applicable to Member States under the web accessibility existing Directive).

Estimated savings and benefits

No changes to estimated savings in legislative procedure.

State of Play:

• Regulation (EU) 2018/1724 entered into force on 11 December 2018
• Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1121 adopted on 29 July 2020

Implementation reported by the Commission

Regulation (EU) 2018/1724 that entered into force on 11 December 2018 specifies the implementation deadlines as 12 December 2020 for information and assistance services; and 12 December 2023 for the online procedures. The first implementing act on the collection and sharing of user statistics and feedback was adopted on 29 July 2020 (Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1121).

Currently the Commission and Member States are preparing for the upcoming implementation deadlines. As of December 2022, Member States' regional and local authorities will also have to connect their online information services to the SDG, where relevant.

From December 2023, Member States have to provide all 21 procedures listed in Annex II of the regulation fully online and give access to users from other EU countries on equal basis to their national users. In addition, the Once-only technical system (OOTS) will become operational as of 12 Dec 2023. OOTS will be a government-to-government system for exchange of evidence that are requested in procedures covered by the SDGR. An implementing act defining the technical and operational specifications of this system is currently being prepared for adoption through committee procedure.

The national coordinators have worked based on the 2019-2020 work programme (Commission notice 31 July 2019 (OJ C257/1)), their national work programmes, and continuing works under 2021-2022 SDG work programme (Commission notice 1 March 2021 (OJ C71/47)).

The first phase of the single digital gateway was launched on time on 12 December 2020.