Public consultation on the Single Digital Gateway

The public consultation on the creation of a 'Single Digital Gateway' opens today. The Gateway would provide easy online access to Single Market information, procedures, assistance and advice for citizens and businesses

What is the ‘Single Digital Gateway’?

The idea behind the Single Digital Gateway is to provide all the information people need to:

• do business cross-border.
• travel to another EU country.
• live, study or work in another EU country.

The Single Digital Gateway would be based on existing portals, contact points and networks. But it would improve and better connect them, and help people to complete the most frequently-used national procedures fully online.

Why do we need it?

If you want to travel to, live, work or do business in another EU country you need to find out about the national rules, requirements and procedures that will apply to you.

Most people go online to find this information.

But online information can be unreliable – it can be incomplete, inaccurate or hard to understand. Sometimes it’s only available in the local language, or not accessible from your country.

We want to make it easier for people and businesses to find essential information to help them make the most of the Single Market.

This initiative was announced in the Commission Communication of May 2015, 'A Digital Single Market Strategy for Europe'. It was also mentioned in the Single Market Strategy of October 2015 as a means of addressing the specific requirements of start-ups.

Have your say

With this consultation the Commission seeks views from all stakeholders – in particular from:

• Businesses, the self-employed and organisations representing businesses.
• Citizens and citizen or consumer representative organisations.
• Public authorities at all levels.

The aim of this consultation is to seek the views of stakeholders on the identified problems and different policy options that can be pursued to address them. For further background information, please consult the inception impact assessment of the initiative.

The results of this consultation will provide valuable input to the Commission when preparing any future policy proposal and assessing the impact of different policy options.

Participate in the consultation

This consultation will remain accessible until 21 November 2016.