For a more competive Europe - big picture

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.