Deregulation, one permit at a time

Every reform agenda in Ukraine has included the word deregulation. Most of the time nothing happens. Occasionally something does, and the difference between the two comes down to method.

The method that works

Begin with an inventory. Every permit, licence, certificate, inspection and mandatory approval that a business can be required to obtain, listed with the legal act that created it and the body that issues it. Producing that list is itself difficult, because nobody has ever held the whole picture.

Then apply a simple test to each item: what harm does this prevent, and is there evidence it prevents it? Anything that cannot answer is deleted by default rather than debated individually. This is why the approach is sometimes called a regulatory guillotine — the burden of proof sits with keeping a rule, not with removing it.

Why it is resisted

Because every permit is somebody's job, and often somebody's income beyond the salary. A requirement with no safety rationale that survives twenty years of reform proposals is usually surviving for a reason.

What actually changed

Large numbers of permits were removed, inspection regimes were consolidated, and construction, food and transport procedures were simplified. The visible effect for a small business was a shorter list of offices to visit before opening.

The thing that determines whether it lasts

Deleted permits reappear under new names unless someone maintains the register and checks it. Deregulation is not an event; it is a maintained inventory. Programmes that treated it as an event were reversed within a few years, quietly.

Every permit deleted meant, on our side, a week and a signature; the sum of them never made a headline and it changed our annual calendar. The resistance is not ideological — behind every permit sits the desk that issues it. The only thing that decides whether it lasts is whether a record is kept that stops the deleted permit coming back.