Business licences will be digitised and easier to issue
The Government has approved an initiative initiated by the Ministry of Economy and Innovation to improve the business environment by introducing amendments to the law that will make licensing processes easier and contribute to more efficient activities of business supervisory authorities.
“We need to help businesses work by reducing barriers and restrictions. The amendments we are initiating will improve licensing processes and provide legal clarity. One piece of legislation will provide the basis for licensing instead of the previous four legal acts. We are also initiating changes that will contribute to improving the performance of supervisory authorities by encouraging them to use more advanced supervisory tools”, said the Minister of the Economy and Innovation A. Armonaitė.
The amendments to the law proposed by the Ministry of the Economy and Innovation will establish general principles for licensing, which will be applied to legislation on licensing in specific areas. It also clearly defines the conditions for licensing, their number, territory and duration. The licensing process will be digitised and licence data will be stored in a single Licensing Information System (LIS).
Currently, the Ministry of the Economy and Innovation implements a project to modernise and standardise the licensing process by integrating the systems of the Contact Point for Services and Products, the Central e-Government Gateway Portal and the LIS, so that a person can not only find all the necessary information on the requirements for the activities he or she wants to carry out, but also order all the necessary licenses in one place.
In Lithuania, around 50,000 licences are issued every year. Currently, there are more than 60 licensed activities and almost 700 different licences and permits issued by over 100 public administrative authorities.
The amendments also improve the functioning of business supervisory authorities by standardising supervisory processes and reducing the excessive burden of inspections.
The authorities will be obliged to apply business risk assessment in their supervisory activities, so that less risky businesses are subject to fewer inspections than the most risky ones. The amendments also provide for reduced penalties for minor infringements committed in the first year by new entrants, making the first year of operation a mitigating circumstance.
The supervisory authorities will be obliged to make the decisions imposing fines, suspending or revoking licences for significant infringements detrimental to the public interest which are adopted and in force public. The aim is not only to deter businesses from committing infringements as a preventive measure, but also to establish a uniform practice in the institutions in terms of qualification of infringements and application of fines, ensure the publicity of decisions taken by the authorities, ensure the validity of their decisions, step up the implementation of the open data policy and, at the same time, promote public awareness and tolerance of infringements.
The draft amendments to the Law on Public Administration, the Law on Services and the Civil Code, prepared by the Ministry of the Economy and Innovation, still have to be approved by the Seimas.
Last updated: 21-06-2024
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