A short history of streamlining permits

The one-stop shop model and the establishment of a licensing and control agency are on the agenda of Petteri Orpo's government. Sometimes it's good to look back at what has happened in terms of obtaining permits smoothly. 

Juha Sipilä's bourgeois government promised when it started in 2015 to smooth out licensing by implementing a one-stop shop model. The concern of the government and the business community was that the permit procedures for investments took too long. In the election debates, there was also an argument about whether state officials complain too much about each other's decisions. The proposal on the integration of environmental permit procedures was drawn up in the Ministry of the Environment and the parliament approved it at the end of the election period. The reform came into force in September 2020. The law enables permits for the use of the environment to be processed together at the operator's request. The coordinating authority is the regional administrative agency, which also gives the applicant, as soon as the applications have been submitted, an estimate of how long it will take to process the permits. 

Sipilä's government also proposed, as part of the social security reform, that the state's regional licensing authorities and their supervisors, such as ELY centers and regional administrative agencies, should be abolished. A central agency, Luova, would have been established in their place. This reform failed when the social security reform failed in the parliament. 

At the end of the last election period, the parliament approved a law that gives green economy investments such as renewable energy projects priority in both licensing agencies and administrative rights. Such projects are processed before other applications. 
 
Petteri Orpo's government has put the establishment of a licensing and control agency on the government agenda. Preparations for the establishment of a new central agency are starting at the Ministry of Finance. 

Implementing a one-stop shop model is part of Orpo's government's program. In particular, the approval of investments in the green economy is wanted to be accelerated. The new Minister of the Environment and Energy, Kai Mykkänen, has taken action quickly. A monitoring group made up of state authorities has been established in the Ministry of the Environment to coordinate the reform. It is surprising that the stakeholder group has not been invited to the monitoring group. You would think that it would be worth listening to the positions of environmental organizations, municipalities, landowners and industrial organizations. 

So what has happened to the existing integrated environmental permit procedure legislation? Did the law speed up licensing? The answer is negative. The authorities have not been able to apply the law much, as operators have preferred that permits concerning the use of the environment, such as permits under the Environmental Protection Act, exceptions under the Nature Conservation Act or mining permits, are handled separately. In licensing, we will therefore go to the old model, because the integrated procedure could only be introduced if the applicant wants it. The applicants have not wanted. 
 
There is still not much experience with the priority law of the Marin government, but the regional administrative agencies say that companies planning energy investments have found the law and are also using it. 

When planning the one-stop shop model, Orpo's government should take into account the experiences so far. It is a pity that the new government decided as a first step to end the Government Office's research and investigation money, which has been able to hire the best experts from the academic world to help the ministries in the preparation of laws. 
 
It's great that Orpo's board wants to secure the planned green investments in Finland and shorten permit processing. Practice has only shown that the preparation of new legislation very often needs to take the entire election season. Probably a faster way to shorten the processing of permits than new legislation would be to resource the permit authorities properly, assign one of the authorities to coordinate the processing of different permits, and ensure that the residents of the area and other operators have a good overall understanding of the investment project and its effects on the environment and other businesses as early as possible.