Greek Digital Gov. Min.: Establishment of a sole proprietorship in five minutes

The launch of an individual business through gov.gr was announced by the Minister of Digital Governance, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, in his speech during the presentation of the operation of the “National Administrative Procedures Policy”. As the minister noted, “thousands of businesses are established every day. Last year 50,000 individual businesses were established. It required more than 5 visits, you had to go to a series of counters to be able to get certain certificates. These five visits now take 5 minutes and the visit is now digital via gov.gr. It’s a big change.”

Referring to the “MITO” scheme, he emphasized that currently 2,500 procedures have been registered, while in a few months these will number approximately 5,000, and reiterated that the Ministry of Digital Governance started with the registration of 501 services on gov.gr, while today they have reached over 1,500 . “Last year we recorded 1.2 billion digital transactions. From 8.8 million in 2018″, he added and pointed out that “things we did not think would happen in our country have happened”.

Mr. Pierrakakis spoke of the multitude of administrative procedures that existed, a policy of redundancy but also the realization in the past that the state did not put the citizen at the center of its interest. He noted that erstwhile procedures were a byproduct of a politico-centric logic, and in fact a by-product of the priorities of the respective state structures-state functionaries. The change is vast he opined noting that all our interactions with the State will be digital if we wish.

The Minister of State, Giorgos Gerapetritis, spoke about a very important day, who noted that no other European state has this specific digital manual to this extent, which facilitates citizens and for this reason all Greeks should feel proud. In fact, he said that “for the first time, they will have inter-ministerial branches of civil servants who will respond to the current challenges, that is, digital analysts, public policy analysts and legal experts”.

The Minister of Development and Investments, Adonis Georgiadis, spoke of a real expression of a previous political decision, political thinking and planning regarding the projects presented. He also spoke about the establishment of the individual business in a few minutes with one step, through a mobile phone through gov.gr and start  business activity as quickly as possible to provide opersonal growth as well as the growth of Greek GDP. He also claimed that to a large extent this digital leap was responsble for the record of Foreign Direct Investments for the second consecutive year, and export records, as well as record tourist receipts. Mr. Georgiadis spoke of excellent, effective andeven pleasant cooperation he had with Mr. Pierrakakis.

Finally, the head of the Independent Public Revenue Authority-AADE, Giorgos Pitsilis, pointed out that it is important to change the procedures, to make them more qualitative and citizen-centric. “At the Independent Inland Revenue Authority over 1,000 people work every day to simplify, digitize, standardize services such as tax refund automation, over €6 billion were given in refunds in 2022.” As Mr. Pitsilis characteristically said, “many things that could not be done in the past have now been done”.