KMU-Finanzierung: Londoner Börse und Kommission verbünden sich

"We have 23 million SMEs in Europe, and if we could persuade them all to take on one extra employee, the unemployment crisis in the EU would be solved," said Daniel Calleja Crespo, the European Commission's SME envoy.

He added: "The Commission has been working hard following the introduction of the Small Business Act to pursue its three main objectives. These are: first, simplification – we need to attain our target of limiting the number of days required to set up a company in each member state to three and limit the cost of establishment of a new company to €100. At the moment we estimate that the average is seven days."

"Secondly, we need more access to funds, which is currently a big problem. We need to improve access to EU programme funds, especially by encouraging micro-credit," continued Calleja Crespo. "The third area we need to encourage is access to markets: only a quarter of all European SMEs are currently exporting across borders within the EU and only an eighth are exporting outside the EU," he explained.

"I have the role of co-ordinating the new SME envoys who have been appointed by the member states. 23 countries have now appointed envoys, and the remaining countries have one week to do so. We have a meeting with industry in Hungary in one week. The envoys must be appointed from senior administration figures," Calleja Crespo explained.

He concluded: "We want to to have the involvement of shareholders in any policy discussions and we want ministers to discuss our ideas with the Competitiveness Council. We also want to meet and discuss ideas with the business community."

"Impact assessment is something which should be carried out within each department of the Commission rather than being dealt with at the end of the policymaking process," said Hugh Morgan-Williams, president of BusinessEurope's SME committee.

Morgan-Williams added: "I welcome the idea of having an envoy from each member state but it's important that the envoys are close to SMEs, it will not work if they are just policy people; they must be close to the business people on the ground."

"The cost of borrowing is excessive for SMEs and new instruments from the European Investment Bank could help," Morgan-Williams suggested, adding: "If the EIB could find an effective way of guaranteeing capital loans that would have a powerful multiplying effect on the market."

"We listen to so many speeches about SMEs but now really is the time for action," exhorted Luuk Borg, manager of the EU-EUREKA Eurostars programme. Borg said: "The way to success is to boost those SMEs – particulalry in the technology sector – which will themselves promote growth if they are successful."

Borg concluded: "We also need to cut down on the number of people required to belong the consortia of SMEs as they attempt to raise finance. The more complicated the composition of consortia, the more time is wasted on administration."

"Now that we are working toward the new financial perspectives these will be steered towards innovation and research,' said the European Commission vice-president responsible for industry and entrepreneurship, Antonio Tajani, speaking at a separate summit event on industry (19 May). He explained: "We are changing the rules on access to finance where we need to account more for the needs of SMEs."

The vice-president announced: "The London Stock Exchange is working with me within the financial forum on formulating solutions to access to funding for SMEs, which sends out a positive message."

"We are changing our rules on research funding, which will be a good opportunity to look at the access to funding issue for SMEs," said Tajani.