Some things have been sped up a lot (thanks to the EU), however in some cases bureaucracy still slows down even the simplest document request.
Personal experience: I want to relocate, so last summer I found a new home and quickly paid a 20K Euros non refundable (in case of withdraw) deposit upfront. Unfortunately I later discovered that my own home can't be sold at market value, or to be more accurate to be purchased at market value with an authorized mortgage, because it was originally intended as (can't translate the proper Italian term) roughly half-owned-by-the-state-property which was a formula intended to help poor families to buy their home for cheap in city developing areas during the 80s. I have no resources to buy the new home without selling the old one first, and no intentions of getting into debt for it.
To make it short, if I want to sell my home at market value to someone paying with a mortgage (likely 98% of buyers need one) I have to request some documentation which involves a tax, which in my case amounts to 5K Euros, plus a notary lawyer for documents filling and transmission which cost a few hundreds Euros. All fine and dandy, too bad that the mean time between the document request and when it is being released amounts to 7-8 months! Big WTF... 7-8 months for a fucking stamp on a piece of paper, plus hopefully one record in a database! I filled, paid and sent the request last January, let's see how much time will it need.
I am extremely lucky that the owner of the home I'm buying will wait until next summer, and I'll have to deposit more money to drag it further, or I would have lost all my deposit only because of bureaucracy.
