PSCs had to be established in all EU countries by 2009, as set out in the Services Directive.

To make the PSCs more responsive to the needs of business, the European Commission and EU countries agreed on a PSC Charter that encourages member countries to develop PSCs that are user-friendly and accessible.

The June 2015 study assesses the performance of the PSCs in the 28 EU Member States and 3 EEA Member States against the PSC Charter criteria.

It focuses on four standard criteria for improving and benchmarking the PSCs:

• quality and availability of information;
• transactionality of e-procedures (the availability of administrative procedures for online completion and the extent to which they can be completed online);
• accessibility for cross-border users;
• usability.

A file is available for each EU country which provides the individual scores per criteria and presents developments, strengths, weaknesses and recommendations for the PSC.