Could this be the final goodbye for the infamous "pečat"?
Even though Croatian companies started the year with the obligation to purchase yet another seal to conduct their daily operations, yes the "likvidirano" seal Total Croatia News reported on back in February, it seems that the EU regulations will force Croatia to finally forget about the constant need for seals, Poslovni.hr reported on April 6, 2016.
Two different Ministries are trying to work out the solution to the problem of excessive bureaucracy when it comes to invoicing, but it seems that the EU will resolve the problem for them since eIDAS ordinance will come into power on July 1, 2016.
EU Regulation on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market (eIDAS) will in future harmonise electronic signatures and identifications of citizens, business and other organisations and websites. The new rules will completely replace the individual signature legislation of all the EU member states, including Croatia.
In the meantime, minister of economy Tomislav Panenić and minister of finance Zdravko Marić are trying to work out a solution for the “invoice liquidation” procedure through yet another change to the Accounting Act but this initiative is still in its early stage so it’s most likely it will not come into power before the aforementioned eIDAS Regulation.
Croatian Independent Software Exporters were the first ones to stress the “likvidirano” procedure problem and estimated that this will cost the IT sector additional 6 million kunas since for a company with 100 incoming invoices a month the whole procedure of printing and stamping invoices eats up 8 hours a month, and we can only imagine how much time other companies are spending on this one very meaningless task and how many additional people had to be employed because of it.
The State did come up with an alternative before the EU passed the eIDAS Regulation act and it regulated the format of e-invoices that have to be accepted by all Ministries and companies from March 1, 2016.
Minister of administrative affairs Dubravka Jurlina Alibegović says she completely supports the eIDAS Regulation “Our ministry supports the use of electronic signatures and seals and we are cooperating with the Ministry o economy in the preparations for the implementation of this Regulation” Jurlina Alibegović stated. She also added that the Ministries are working on a system that will enable the use of these documents inside a Cloud so that documents will no longer have to be printed.
So, we guess we will all have to wait until July and until then still train those arm muscles while stamping piles of documents.
