This research setting scheme illustrates the permitting process for industrial projects, showing how business-level actions interface with regulatory, institutional, and technological frameworks. It has been elaborated by the Study team leveraging on what already assessed in the academic and grey literature.
Project developers initiate the process by submitting permitting requests (Business level). These requests enter a structured permitting system governed by the overarching policy context, which includes both EU Regulations and National Regulations.
Within the permitting process, two main levels are addressed:
- Competent authorities level: Here, the distribution of responsibilities among National, Regional, and Local Authorities is mapped, clarifying which authority handles each aspect of the permitting process.
- Technology level: This involves the analysis and use of IT systems to manage permitting requests. The process is broken down into specific procedures or steps, which are digitized to streamline and standardise the workflow.
Ultimately, this structured process leads to the issuance of industrial permits (endpoint), ensuring that project development aligns with relevant regulations and is efficiently managed through both institutional coordination and digital tools. This scheme serves as a guiding framework for our research activities, helping to orient our data collection, mapping, and analysis of permitting processes across different institutional and technological settings.
To structure the research, we have defined five specific research questions:
- How are competences distributed among permitting authorities across different institutions and levels of governance in the EU?
- What is the level of complexity of permitting processes?
- What digital tools support and enhance permitting processes?
- How digital tools support and enhance permitting processes?
- To what extent digital system for permitting effectively enhance the permitting process?
- How do businesses perceive the permitting processes?
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