Swedish update on regulatory costs

The Board of Swedish Industry and Commerce (NNR) has now published the English translation of its report "The Total Cost of Regulations to Businesses in Sweden - 2008 compared with 2005". Results show that changes to financial regulatory obligations have had more of an impact than changes to administrative obligations on the total cost to business. In spite of very numerous simplification measures taken by the Government, it seems the effects on the ground are limited.
Summary by D. Besnainou: The Board of Swedish Industry and Commerce for Better Regulation (NNR), is an independent, non-party political organisation. NNR is entirely financed by its members, who include 15 Swedish business organisations and trade associations that together represent more than 300,000 companies. (a third of all active enterprises in Sweden, in every sector and of all sizes). NNR is also an active advocate of regulatory reform at EU level and chairs the BUSINESSEUROPE Better Regulation Working Group.
This report is based on in-depth discussion with 6 companies on their administrative burdens:
For each company, the report describes the regulatory burden trend, the distribution of regulatory costs in 2005 and 2008 per segment (administrative, financial and material) and per category (labour market, environment, taxes and sector). The report also includes the opinions of the companies on future change and needs.
The general conclusion of the report is "In all, the companies have in quite different ways been affected by the implemented changes. For three of the companies, changes in costs were virtually non-existent from an overall perspective. One company, Tranås Energi, reported substantially higher costs due to additional requirements in sector regulations. For WelcomeGruppen, costs dropped by 8.9%, a decrease linked entirely to lower employer contributions.
A close examination of the report shows that there was no increase of administrative burden between 2005 and 2008, according to the SCM methodology. Reduction of costs is visible in all companies, due to new legislation on employment which reduces the costs of hiring younger people. This reduction is not completely compensated for with the increase of burden in, for example, time spent reporting on or obtaining permits.