From time to time it is necessary to look at the big picture. What do we need for a more competitive Europe? Innovative and determined actions in many areas – like:
1. More competitive enterprises – innovative and productive. 85% of growth comes from product and service innovation – so this must have the highest attention.
2. More competitive public sectors – lower cost, lower tax pressure and less red tape.
3. A Single market – true harmonization makes the market bigger.
4. A mobile, educated, flexible, and motivated workforce – less routine work and more value creation (driven by rapidly retiring population).
5. Better rule of law – less fraud and tax evasion.
6. Lower CO2 emissions – less material, transport, travel and work that can be automated.
Detailing – what and how?
1. More competitive enterprises. How?
1.1. Innovative products and services
1.2. Innovative selling and service processes – mostly (but not only) a question of digitalization
1.3. Better productivity – cutting administrative costs in half (including DG Enterprise 25% from red tape)
1.4. Lower risks
1.5. Lower financing costs and better return on liquidity
2. More competitive public sectors. How?
2.1. Lower administrative burden by 25% (DG enterprise red tape initiative)
2.2. Accept and send only structured electronic invoices – supporting interoperable global standards (ISO20022 family)
2.3. Adopt unified reporting codes for all tax, statistics, financing, sustainability and HR-reporting
2.4. Outsource and privatize routines – free up resources for guiding and supervising
3. More of a Single Market. How?
Examples from digitalization area:
3.1. Implement VAT-directive for simplified and equal treatment of e-invoices
3.2. Use global standards family (ISO20022) for e-procurement, e-invoicing, SEPA-payments, payment references, account statements, finance requests, reverse factoring, e-id and VAT-reporting
3.3. Automate and harmonize VAT-reporting and collection (split payment model)
3.4. Harmonize VAT-exemptions and tax rates generally
3.5. Harmonize patenting
3.6. Use federated model for strong e-id (reuse e-bank codes) with ISO20022 e-id message standard
4. A mobile, educated, flexible, and motivated workforce. How?
Examples from digitalization area:
4.1. Liberate workforce by automating administration
4.2. Automate sales processes
5. Better rule of law. How?
Examples from digitalization area:
5.1. Migrate to e-invoicing
5.2. Automate VAT-reporting and payments
5.3. Regulate away cash for business transactions
6. Lower CO2 emissions. How?
Examples from digitalization area:
6.1. E-invoicing and digitalized business processes
6.2. Business-process integrated sustainability-reporting
6.3. High carbon tax
The above is viewed from the digitalizing business process angle – please feel free to fill in missing ones – also from other areas. I will drill deeper in some of these in the next post.