Once-Only goes local, 2025
27 March 2025 | 3 minutes read
In 2025, EU Member States and the European Commission are taking “Once-Only” on the road around Europe, helping the many competent public authorities connect to the Once-Only Technical System – an EU-wide framework that will help reduce the burden of administrative procedures and red-tape when moving aboard within the EU.
When a business or an individual citizen completes an administrative procedure connected to the Once-Only Technical System, they can request that their authentic documents, needed to complete this procedure, to be exchanged directly between the public register and the requesting authorities across all EU Member States. This might be permits, certificates, licenses and diplomas, etc. The scope of Once-Only currently covers 21 procedures in areas like education (study applications and the recognition of diplomas), mobility (registering vehicles and proof of residence) and starting, running and closing a business elsewhere in the EU.
The core infrastructure of this system went live in December 2023(opens in a new tab). Large scale testing events held in Brussels, known as “Projectathons”(opens in a new tab)”, and more targeted, agile “Accelerators(opens in a new tab)”, have helped implementation teams from the EU Member States further build and refine the core infrastructure.
It is now of critical importance to connect the ‘competent authorities’, those organisations who will provide or request the data exchanged through the Once-Only Technical System, to the system itself.
This process started in Helsinki in October last year, with the “Europe Goes Once-Only – Finland edition(opens in a new tab)” event. Building on this success, next week will see “Europe Goes Once-Only – Lithuania edition(opens in a new tab)” take place on 3-4 April 2025 in Vilnius. Further “Europe Goes Once-Only” editions are also planned in Portugal and Croatia, later this year, as well as additional meetings and events(opens in a new tab).
Visit the Once-Only hub(opens in a new tab) to understand how Once-Only will help make it easier for European businesses and citizens to live, study, work and retire anywhere in the EU Single Market.