A measure whereby enterprises undergoing bankruptcy have to pay a high fee to court even though they are going bust due to a lack of financial resources has been selected as the biggest bureaucratic nonsense of the year, according to an online survey among businesses organised by the Slovak Young Entrepreneurs Association.

The survey is aimed at identifying meaningless legislative measures that put bureaucratic burdens on entrepreneurs and at drawing the attention of politicians to such measures so that they can be eliminated. "This year's selection of bureaucratic absurdities reflected a whole array of problems that entrepreneurs have to cope with in order to be able to run their businesses and meet regulations," said chairman of the Slovak Young Entrepreneurs Association Ján Solík. The second most absurd legislative measure was a regulation whereby all employers are obliged to extend health supervision via setting up a working health service in their firms. Such a service should even carry out supervision of jobs that are least susceptible to danger at the workplace, including administrative positions for example. Next was a measure on granting permits to passenger transport companies, including taxi firms. According to the legislation, permits for running a taxi service in a region are granted by the respective district office located in that given region. This means that while taxi drivers with a licence for Bratislava region are allowed to give lifts to passengers from Bratislava to Nitra, they can't bring back passengers from Nitra to Bratislava if the taxi service doesn't have a licence from a district office in the Nitra region. Bus companies, for their part, need to ask for approval from all regions through whose territory they transport passengers, even if their buses don't stop in those regions. The annually held survey, which was the third of its kind to be organised by the Slovak Young Entrepreneurs Association, involved a total of 1,002 respondents.

Christopher George, Photo: TASR