EC Services Directive
In December 2006 the "Directive of the European Parliament and Council of Europe on Services in the Single Market“ was passed with the aim of removing the existing legal and administrative barriers to the trade in services between EC member states and to ensure a right of establishment for service providers.
The EC member states are obliged to integrate the services directive into national law by the end of 2009 and to fulfil its core requirements. These include:
- norm screening, i.e. the consistent removal of constraints and discriminations,
- the establishment of a standard contact person for all necessary formalities and procedures,
- the right to a smooth handling of electronic procedures, and
- deemed clearance, should a deadline be exceeded.
As a major cornerstone of the Lisbon strategy, the directive aims to achieve a genuine single European market for services. The intention of the controversial directive is ultimately to increase the competitiveness of the European Union and to create jobs.
MATERNA's consulting methodology
With MATERNA's consulting methodology a plan of action is drawn up to introduce the EC services directive cost-effectively in a defined area. Our approach is to concentrate on the particular objectives of the local authority in question, achieving the optimum balance between meeting legal obligations and ensuring an individual improvement to the local economic situation.
Based on the objectives and an evaluation of the situation, a description of the scope of activities is refined step-by-step and finally translated into a plan of action which can be implemented, for example, using the MATERNA solution approach. This ensures that adherence to the legal framework stipulated by the services directive remains in focus throughout the project, along with a cost-effective and realistic course of action.
The MATERNA solution approach
MATERNA focuses on the portal and (meta-)form components as the core of its technical implementation. These components serve as an interface between the service providers, the standard contact person and, as the case may be, the relevant offices, to make processes transparent. These components form the central online platform for a one-stop government portal. A variety of other procedures, systems and components can be integrated into the portal.
MATERNA has extensive experience in implementing forms management solutions. Together with the Federal Office of Administration in Germany, we developed Government Site Builder (GSB), the content management solution of the German federal government. MATERNA has implemented more than half of all GSB websites for government agencies to date. As a systems integrator, MATERNA also has the necessary experience to successfully integrate further components. These include procedure processing systems, directory services and the document safe.
As an official partner of the German online project "IT Translation of the EC Services Directive“, MATERNA is particularly careful to ensure that the findings from this project are applied cost-effectively.
