Slow-moving bureaucracy cost Italian firms almost 14 billion euros last year, according to a business report issued on Tuesday.
The report, compiled by Rome-based research institute Censis and retailers' federation Confcommercio, said the red tape burden on Italy's business sector in 2005 amounted to 13.7 billion euros, the equivalent of 1% of GDP.
The average cost per company was 11,600 euros, it said.
The cost of opening a business is 17 times higher in Italy than in Britain and 11 times higher than in France, the study found.
It said at least nine separate administrative and fiscal procedures were required, costing around 3,600 euros and taking up 13 working days.
The only country in Europe that fares worse is Greece, where it costs 3,743 euros to open a business.
The report said that starting up in Italy was even more complex if a warehouse was involved.
This immediately doubled the amount of red tape, elevating costs to at least 34,000 euros and absorbing 284 working days.
Business owners who are forced to involve the judicial system face an even more daunting bureaucracy.
According to the report, some 40 different administrative procedures are required in such cases and more than three years can pass (1,210 days).
It said this was worse than Greece, where judicial procedures swallow up a maximum of 730 working days.
The report also cited the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD) in a section devoted to energy costs for Italian businesses.
It said that Italian industrial firms footed the highest electricity bills in Europe, paying 276% more than the European average.
Even Italian firms that fail to survive are penalised, the report said, with bankruptcy procedures that are the "slowest and most complex" among OECD nations.
"One businessman in three believes that the public administration has slowed down his company's production activities or at least has not helped it," the report concluded.
