Bureaucracy in Portugal represents a high cost, not only financial, but also legal and economic. The article argues that it constitutes one of the most persistent context costs that condition the country's competitiveness, diverting resources from productive activity and reducing the efficiency of organizations.
The problem in Portugal is described as deeper, as there is a confusion between rigor and formalism. The successive demand for declarations, certificates, authentications, and proof documents, frequently related to already known or easily verifiable facts, reveals a culture in which form prevails over substance. This reality is not exclusive to the Public Administration, being also reproduced by private entities in highly regulated sectors.
The article identifies that even today there are institutions that refuse digitally signed documents or demand additional formalities that the law does not require, not because of legal necessity, but because internal procedures have never been reviewed. Bureaucracy feeds on a combination of inertia, excessive zeal, and resistance to change, where a new declaration is demanded because nobody wants to assume the responsibility of waiving it.
The economic and legal effects are significant, including delays in investments, increased transaction costs, waste of working hours, and weakening of the principle of good administration. The article concludes that as long as Portugal continues to measure rigor by the number of documents demanded instead of the quality of decisions, bureaucracy will remain intact, transforming simple procedures into complex processes.
