What is the MITOS System Against Bureaucracy in Public Administration?

The discussion between Pierrikakis and Donaghue in Athens this week didn’t just cover current international issues such as trade wars and defense spending but extended to the European goal of a Unified Capital Market and the steps needed to achieve it. During their exchange, the President of the Eurogroup, Paschal Donaghue, showed interest in learning about Greece’s anti-bureaucracy system, MITOS, from Kyriakos Pierrikakis. This Greek model could potentially provide insights for the challenging task of unifying the capital market in the EU, which requires massive reforms to harmonize administrative procedures across member states concerning capital markets. MITOS stands as a National Registry of Administrative Procedures aimed at standardizing and recording processes within Greece’s public administration, equipped with 1,200 personnel. Through the systematic modeling and continuous updating of these procedures, many bureaucratic burdens like justifications and formulations are drastically reduced. The system operates via the electronic platform mitos.gov.gr, where individuals and legal entities can search for stages of public process implementation, service points, justifications, estimated processing times, costs, applicable legislation, and more since 2022. Public authorities, including municipalities and regions, have obligations under MITOS: recording all administrative procedures, ensuring data updates, connecting internal systems to MITOS, training staff, submitting progress reports, adhering to schedules, and promoting transparency. Starting January 1, 2025, a new mechanism automatically informs responsible employees of legislative regulations or regulatory acts that establish new administrative procedures or modify existing ones. These changes must be registered on the platform within 10 days of publication.