The administrative burden on Belgian companies has been cut by about one quarter in the past two years under the country's campaign to cut red tape, known as "Kafka", a government study says.
Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt:
The Federal Planning Bureau calculated the bureaucratic burden at 2.57 per cent of gross domestic product, down from 3.43 per cent in 2002. The saving amounts to over €233 million over the past two years.
"Less administrative burden means entrepreneurs can focus more on their core business," Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said in a statement.
The multi-ethnic nation of ten million has extremely complex bureaucratic systems. The country is divided to 589 communes and run by a national government and six other separate governments representing the French, Dutch and German language groups and the Brussels, Waloon and Flanders regions.
Secretary of State for Administrative Simplification Vincent Van Quickenborne, said the millions in savings came from "alleviating some of the administrative burden imposed on citizens and entrepreneurs".
Based on thousands of complaints, the government eliminated some outdated rules, such as one concerning "conform copies."
For two centuries, official documents submitted to authorities had to be accompanied by a copy issued and stamped by an individual's local district proving the authenticity of the original.