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EU con­sulta­tion: How can we make the EU a bet­ter place for SMEs?

11.09.2014
The Small Busi­ness Act (SBA) — a wide-ran­ging set of meas­ures designed to make life easi­er for small com­pan­ies — has already proved to be a good basis for SME policy. As it is built upon the exchange of best prac­tices, sup­port for inter­na­tion­al­isa­tion and entre­pren­eur­ship as well as access to fin­ance (imple­men­ted via the fin­an­cing instru­ments of CIP and COSME), it encour­ages EU coun­tries to take up effect­ive solu­tions that have worked else­where and to come up with equally good ideas them­selves. Com­bined with strong ini­ti­at­ives for smart reg­u­la­tion it has con­trib­uted to SMEs’ abil­ity to weath­er the eco­nom­ic crisis. Ferdin­ando Nelli Feroci, Com­mis­sion­er for Industry and Entre­pren­eur­ship, said: ​“As Europe con­tin­ues on the road to recov­ery, we need to ensure the EU’s Small Busi­ness Act is still fit for pur­pose. I there­fore invite all parties inter­ested in SMEs to make their views known. The Com­mis­sion wants your ideas and is ready to listen to your com­ments.”

Five pil­lars to help the EU’s small busi­nesses thrive

This spring, European level busi­ness organ­isa­tions and nation­al gov­ern­ment SMES rep­res­ent­at­ives (SME envoys) already agreed that the four exist­ing pil­lars of the SBA should remain: 
  • Access to fin­ance: Even with some indic­a­tion of a more pos­it­ive out­look, SMEs are still much in need of afford­able solu­tions for their fin­an­cing needs.
  • Access to mar­kets / inter­na­tion­al­isa­tion: For SMEs to grow new mar­kets need to be explored.
  • Entre­pren­eur­ship: con­tin­ued sup­port for poten­tial entre­pren­eurs is cru­cial because of con­tinu­ing levels of high unem­ploy­ment espe­cially among young people.
  • Bet­ter reg­u­la­tion: the reduc­tion of admin­is­trat­ive bur­dens con­tin­ues to remain an import­ant tar­get, des­pite pro­gress already made in this area.
To close the skills gap felt in many of Europe’s eco­nom­ies it was also agreed to add a fifth pil­lar to make EU SME policy even more stable:
  • Train­ing and skills of entre­pren­eurs and staff: for the eco­nomy to grow entre­pren­eurs need skills them­selves and skilled staff.

Call to action

The pub­lic con­sulta­tion launched on Monday seeks fur­ther input from all inter­ested parties, includ­ing entre­pren­eurs and busi­ness organ­isa­tions, to help the European Com­mis­sion ensure the SBA is fit to meet future chal­lenges. As pub­lic con­sulta­tions launched by the Com­mis­sion remain open for 12 weeks, this con­sulta­tion will close on 15.12.2014. The pub­lic con­sulta­tion can be found here.

Small Busi­ness Act

Adop­ted in June 2008, the Small Busi­ness Act for Europe reflects the Com­mis­sion’s polit­ic­al will to recog­nise the cent­ral role of SMEs in the EU eco­nomy and for the first time puts into place a com­pre­hens­ive SME policy frame­work for the EU and its Mem­ber States. It aims to improve the over­all approach to entre­pren­eur­ship, per­man­ently anchor the ​‘Think Small First’ prin­ciple in policy mak­ing from reg­u­la­tion to pub­lic ser­vice, and to pro­mote SMEs’ growth by help­ing them tackle the remain­ing prob­lems which hamper their devel­op­ment. The Small Busi­ness Act for Europe applies to all inde­pend­ent com­pan­ies which have few­er than 250 employ­ees: 99% of all European busi­nesses.

Back­ground

COSME is the EU pro­gramme for the Com­pet­it­ive­ness of Enter­prises and Small and Medi­um-sized Enter­prises (SMEs) run­ning from 2014 to 2020 with a planned budget of €2.3bn with a lever­age effect able to provide up to €25 bn. The pro­gramme will sup­port SMEs in the fol­low­ing areas: bet­ter access to fin­ance for SMEs, access to mar­kets and pro­mo­tion of the entre­pren­eur­i­al cul­ture. The COSME pro­gramme builds on the suc­cess of the Com­pet­it­ive­ness and Innov­a­tion Frame­work Pro­gramme (CIP) which helped to mobil­ise more than € 16 bn of loans and € 2.8 bn of ven­ture cap­it­al to over 328 000 SMEs in Europe from 2007 – 2013. Source: European Commission
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