1 POINTS OF SINGLE CONTACT IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC Martin Tlapa Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade

2 Our Philosophy  Internal Market – great potential for business  Why is this potential still not fully realized? barriers in our heads (fear from the unknown) weak awareness of European citizens and businesses (not large companies, but SMEs)  What can we do? cut the mental borders disseminate information about the benefits of doing business in the Internal Market

3 PSC project management I. The aim is to provide our businesses and consumers with a first – class service. How do we know that we have chosen the proper way?  continuous assessing the number of clients  continuous assessing the satisfaction of clients (mystery calls)  business costs savings  economic return of the project

4 PSC project management II. How can we reach our aims?  building of skills of the PSCs (language and professional)  building of competences of the Ministry (up-date of information, support to the PSCs)  effective promotion  web portal  For all these activities we have laid down specific terms and responsible people.

5 PSC´s in the Czech Republic – battle on two fronts  How do we organize it? follow the times of electronic communications — electronic PSC at face to face contact must remain — 15 “ Corporeal ” PSCs

6 “Corporeal“ PSC´s.  infrastructure of 15 offices (in all Czech districts and 2 in Prague)  located at the district Trade License Offices  Qualified staff regularly trained supervised and supported by our experts from the Services Directive Implementation Team at least intermediate knowledge of English language

7 Our story Why Trade Licence Offices?  vast majority of authorizations are issued by Trade License Offices  their location (in all Czech districts) is ideal to cover the whole area of the Czech Republic  Ministry is a supervising body  rationalization of the costs - the network of offices is already existing

8 Electronic PSC  established at (most frequently visited web portal by entrepreneurs in the Czech Republic)  2 main functions: informative (information about authorization schemes, consumer protection law, remedies and dispute resolutions, etc) transactional (able to convey the application to relevant authorizing body)  English version will be available by the end of February

9 First experience Data available after the first month of operation  more than 180 requests on corporeal PSC´s and more than 5000 web portal visitors  the busiest PSCs are in Prague and in Brno  in most cases personal services, small crafts,  most of them (approx. 70%) on cross – border provision of services in the neighbouring countries (AT, DE, PO, SK)

10 Challenges We will be facing a number of challenges in the future!  We need to make sure that the PSCs work with the relevant and updated information  The quality of the staff must remain on the highest level (continuing education, deepening of their language skills, etc.)  Businesses as well as consumers must be constantly informed about the service provided by PSCs (promotion, advertising, …)  The aim is to built a “gateway“ to public administration. PSCs must be a first-class service for the tax payers!

11 Way forward Services remains a priority  Importance of timely and effective implementation  Process of mutual evaluation  Services excluded from the Services Directive

12 5 keys to unlock potential of Internal Market  Remaining barriers to be removed between old and new member states  Intellectual property rights  Network industries  Completion of IM in services  Lack of common vision in the internal market

13 Thank you for your attention! Martin Tlapa Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade