THE INTERCONNECTION OF BUSINESS REGISTERS

             Public consultation


                 Contribution of

              Unioncamere Calabria

          Desk Enterprise Europe Network




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Unioncamere Calabria is the regional Union of the Chambers of Commerce of Calabria, an
organization that represents and coordinates activities and interests of the Chambers of Commerce
located in the Region of Calabria. As we know, in Italy these are public organizations that manage
and store the business registers, the really very instrument to guarantee transparency and
competitiveness for increasing opportunities offered by the internal market.
But actually the action of this tool is limited by the national level in which business registers are
operating and therefore they are inadequate in respect of the European citizens and enterprises
needs and expectations.
The Italian System of the Chambers of Commerce, by its national agency INFOCAMERE, is one
of the charter members of the EBR, which allows to see information about more of 20 millions of
enterprises, located in 18 Member States and six other European jurisdictions.
This is a case of excellence of cooperation among the European public administration thanks to
which they offer a public service in conjoint manner, and we think that it should be a central pillar
to improve the access to the enterprises information of the business registers at European level and
therefore it is important that all Member States link their business register to the EBR.
It is opportune that all Member States signs a "governance agreement" with the coordination of the
European Commission, and this agreement should indicate the modalities of participation and
connection to the EBR and foresee that the adhesion as GEIE Member is not obligatory.
To guarantee the efficiency of the cross-border cooperation and a better quality of information, such
as a better understanding of data, the European Commission should define a regulation to establish
a set of mandatory data to record in the business registers for developing an "European
Certification", in support of the administration simplification at European level.
Moreover, the EBR should develop a system to transfer data and information with legal value in
electronic format too, and the Commission should establish by regulation the links among the
different entities in the business registers of European Union (for example, an enterprise should use
the same identification indicated in the business register located in the place where is situated its
registered office when this enterprise inscribe a branch in another Member State or when it register
of a holder of shares of companies situated in the European Union.
We think that the EBR could be used for the implementation of the BRITE project and in support of
the European policies that foresee the information exchange among the business registers.
Concerning this subject, it is appropriate that the Member States define, by the European
Commission coordination, situations, time and modalities for information exchange in relation to
these policies, such as the operations that could be realized by the business registers with relation to
the communications provided other registers.
With regard to the IMI, it is surely an excellent instrument to guarantee a clear and efficient
administrative cooperation among the Member States, but only if this tool is used to solve the
"special cases" that could not be solved by the business registers system. The IMI system should
allow a no duplication of information and more rapid process to reach on the necessary information.
For this raison, all Member States should use the EBR system (that has a Multilanguage interfaces)
to collect information already present in the business registers and it should be appropriate to create
on the IMI system some informatics interfaces (API) to allow that all Member States having

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information in registers or archives (not only business registers) could automate the responses input
in the IMI system




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