# A productivity commission for Spain: reviewing rules with evidence and a deadline

> Spain needs an independent productivity commission on the Australian model to carry out the systematic review of outdated rules, duplication and needless procedures that Miriam González called for at Democracia 21's launch. Spain already has a Consejo de la Productividad, created in 2024, with functional autonomy and an annual report to Congress. The radical-centre proposal gives it a public work programme of inquiries into the stock of rules, open hearings outside Madrid, a fixed deadline for each report and a legal duty for the government to answer every recommendation with reasons.

- URL: https://www.radicalcentre.eu/en/articles/productivity-commission-for-spain-reviewing-rules
- Language: en
- Publisher: radical centre / centro radical
- Published: 2026-11-07
- Topic: Democracy & institutions
- Author: radical centre
- Licence: CC BY 4.0

## Key points

- CEOE counted 719 state rules approved in Spain in 2024, 5% more than the year before, and 894 including the regions.
- Australia's Productivity Commission, created by an Act of Parliament in 1998, runs public inquiries with submissions, hearings and a draft report, and its final reports must be tabled within 25 sitting days.
- Spain's Consejo de la Productividad (Royal Decree 758/2024) has functional autonomy and sends an annual report to Congress; nothing in the decree obliges the government to respond to it.
- Law 27/2022 already makes the body responsible for an evaluated policy answer each recommendation within two months and justify any it rejects.
- Our proposal: turn the Consejo into a productivity commission by law, give it inquiries into the stock of rules, and apply the two-month duty to answer to every recommendation.

At Democracia 21's launch in Madrid on 10 October, Miriam González described a bureaucracy that suffocates people and firms, and asked for a systematic and urgent review of outdated rules, duplicated ones and procedures nobody needs. Our [overview of her speech](/en/articles/democracia-21-miriam-gonzalez-proposals-radical-centre) sets that demand next to the rest of her programme. This piece takes it seriously as a job of work and asks who would actually do it.

The size of the job is easy to see. CEOE, the employers' confederation, counts the rules Spain publishes every year. In its report on 2024 it found 719 state-level rules, 5% more than in 2023, and 894 once the regions are added, nearly two a day. State and regional bulletins together ran to almost 300,000 pages. Royal decree-laws, the government's emergency instrument, made up 46% of all rules with the force of law, up from 32% the year before. Whatever one thinks of each of those rules, nobody in a ministry is reading the whole stock with fresh eyes, and a review of this size needs an institution with staff, a work programme and a clock.

Our earlier piece on [sunset clauses](/en/articles/sunset-clauses-evaluation-popper-piecemeal-reform) dealt with the flow: every major new law states its test and lapses unless parliament renews it on the evidence. That leaves the stock, decades of rules that will never come up for renewal on their own. Australia has had a body for exactly this since 1998.

## What Australia built

The Productivity Commission describes itself as the Australian Government's independent research and advisory body on economic, social and environmental questions. An Act of Parliament created it in 1998, and its roots go back to the Industries Assistance Commission of 1974. It administers nothing and holds no executive power. Its chair and commissioners are appointed for fixed periods, it has its own budget and permanent staff, and it works at arm's length from the rest of government. The government largely decides what it looks at; the findings are the Commission's own.

Its statutory guidelines tell it to improve the productivity of the economy and to reduce unnecessary regulation, and also to recognise the interests of the community generally and of everyone likely to be affected by its proposals, and to make sure industry develops in ecologically sustainable ways. Productivity and protection sit in the same list.

The method is the interesting part. The Treasurer sends a written reference setting out the scope and the deadline, usually 12 months, six or less for pressing matters. The Commission publishes an issues paper and invites submissions, which go up on its website for everyone to read. It holds hearings, publishes a draft report, takes more submissions and holds more hearings on the draft. The final report goes to the government and must be tabled in Parliament within 25 sitting days. The government is free to reject the advice, and the Commission's own guide says that in practice more recommendations have been accepted than rejected, and that some rejected at first were adopted years later.

## What Spain already has

Spain has the beginnings of this. Royal Decree 758/2024 created the Consejo de la Productividad de España, following the EU Council's non-binding 2016 recommendation on national productivity boards. It is attached to the Ministry of Economy through the Secretary of State for the Economy, and the decree gives it functional autonomy over its work plan and its analyses. Its voting members include nominees from several ministries and the Banco de España, the president of the Economic and Social Council and five independent economists, on five-year terms that cannot be renewed in the same post. It publishes an annual report on productivity, which the minister sends to the Congress economy committee.

Nothing in the decree requires the government to answer it. And a separate Spanish law already shows how to fix that. Article 23 of [Law 27/2022](https://www.boe.es/eli/es/l/2022/12/20/27/con), on the evaluation of public policies, requires the body responsible for an evaluated policy to publish, within two months of the final evaluation, the measures it will take on each recommendation and the reasons for rejecting any it will not adopt. Spain has the board and it has the duty to answer. They sit in different laws, and nobody has joined them.

## How the commission should work

This week's readings shape the design. Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's *Abundance* argues, as Greg Berman's review for Vital City puts it, that rules built up over half a century created repeated review points where projects stall, until following procedure came to matter more than getting results, and officials lost the discretion they need and fell back on self-protective rule-following. So the commission's question for every rule is whether it delivers its purpose today, and at what cost in time.

James C. Scott's *Seeing Like a State* explains why central schemes fail: they impose a simplified picture on a society too complex for planners to see, and they throw away the practical knowledge of the people on the ground. A review written in a Madrid ministry would repeat the mistake. The commission's hearings should travel, to provincial capitals and town halls, and hear the clerk who processes the licence, the inspector, the self-employed plumber and the neighbour the rule was meant to protect. Much of Spain's regulation is regional, and the regions should be able to commission inquiries too.

Friedrich Hayek, in *The Constitution of Liberty*, wanted government bound by general rules fixed and announced in advance, so that people can foresee how authority will use its powers and plan their lives. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that he saw vague formulas in legislation as a slow erosion of the rule of law. That gives the commission a drafting preference: where a permit depends on case-by-case judgement, replace it with a clear general rule anyone can check in advance, and keep the official's judgement for the cases the rule cannot foresee.

Put together, this is our proposal. A law turns the Consejo into a Comisión de Productividad with its own budget and staff. Each year it publishes a work programme of inquiries into the stock of rules, one area at a time, with written terms of reference and a deadline. Every inquiry publishes an issues paper and all submissions, holds hearings outside Madrid and releases a draft before the final report. For every rule it examines, it names what the rule protects, whether a worker, a consumer, a river or a tenant, and recommends the simplest way to keep that protection, which sometimes means merging two rules into one and sometimes means scrapping a procedure that protects nobody. The final report goes to Congress, and within two months the government answers each recommendation on the Law 27/2022 model, saying in public what it will do and why it rejects anything it turns down.

The left is right that rules exist to protect people, and the commission keeps every purpose on the table. The market-liberal tradition is right that duplication and needless procedures are a tax on everyone who tries to build or start something, and that clear general rules beat discretion. The commission itself belongs to neither camp: an independent body that advises without vetoing, so it adds no new [veto point](/en/articles/what-is-vetocracy-fukuyama-dunkelman), works in the open, and leaves the government a deadline to say yes or no. Tomorrow we look at what it takes to start a business in Spain, which would make a good first reference.

## FAQ

### What is a productivity commission?

An independent public body that studies how laws and policies affect the economy and recommends changes. Australia's Productivity Commission is the best-known example: the government sets most of its work programme, and the Commission reaches its findings on its own analysis, in public inquiries open to anyone.

### Does Spain have a productivity board?

Yes. The Consejo de la Productividad de España was created by Royal Decree 758/2024 following the 2016 EU Council recommendation on national productivity boards. It is attached to the Ministry of Economy, has functional autonomy and publishes an annual report that goes to the Congress economy committee.

### How many new rules does Spain approve each year?

According to CEOE's report on regulatory output, Spain approved 719 state-level rules in 2024, 5% more than in 2023, and 894 counting the regions. Official bulletins published almost 300,000 pages.

### Would a productivity commission just deregulate?

Its job is to check whether each rule still achieves what it was written for and at what cost. It names what the rule protects, keeps that protection, and recommends the simplest way to deliver it. The government and parliament make the final decision.

## Sources

- [A guide to the Productivity Commission](https://assets.pc.gov.au/about/productivity-commission-quick-guide.pdf), Productivity Commission (Australian Government) (2019)
- [Real Decreto 758/2024, por el que se crea el Consejo de la Productividad de España](https://www.boe.es/buscar/doc.php?id=BOE-A-2024-15701), BOE (2024)
- [CEOE denuncia que el exceso de la burocracia frena la inversión, tras aumentar un 5% las normas en 2024](https://forbes.es/economia/754738/ceoe-denuncia-que-el-exceso-de-la-burocracia-frena-la-inversion-tras-aumentar-un-5-las-normas-en-2024/), Forbes España (Europa Press) (2025)
- [Why 'Abundance' Matters](https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/articles/why-abundance-matters), Vital City (2025)
- [Seeing Like a State](https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300078152/seeing-like-a-state/), Yale University Press (1998)
- [The Rule of Law](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rule-of-law/), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2026)