Why Focus on Enterprises?

Abstract

The reasons for giving special treatment to enterprises, compared with other stakeholders, are extensive. Companies and entrepreneurship, as such, enjoy no special status. Instead, what counts is the sum total of direct and indirect repercussions of political decisions. This is what dictates their being given special treatment, in terms of the consequences of new and amended business regulations. Business owners are a political minority and will most certainly remain so and few politicians know what everyday life in business is, although many politicians mean well. The politicians’ main concern is, of course, the budget but what is self-evident when the state is a stakeholder is deemed by decision-makers to be less obvious where other stakeholders, such as business, are concerned. In a market economy, it is necessary to ensure that companies can compete on equivalent terms. Matters intensively discussed today include, for example, which requirements should be imposed on companies that bid for public contracts. Financial, social and environmental demands are imposed that may go beyond the scope of the actual product or service being procured. Gender equality plans or anti-discrimination clauses may be required, or it may be stipulated how a procured product is to be transported and what fuel the transporter is to use. There is a risk that decision-makers who state their wish for stiffer competition in certain sectors will instead, through their own actions, impair competition in the sectors they are seeking to stimulate.

This is why an early RIA is so important. It should be an analysis that, in an initial phase, is confined to direct effects on companies but is used to assess the effects on society as a whole in the subsequent phase.