Small Business Act to address SMEs' most pressing issues 

Speaking at the Microsoft SME Day in Brussels on 12 June, the Commission's head of SME policy, Mechthild Wörsdörfer, said the SBA would primarily target better regulation, as public consultations with the business community had clearly identified this as the main concern. 

Wörsdörfer said the Commission's approach would remain two-fold, with thorough impact assessment for incoming legislation as well as a simplification of existing rules. But it also promised to act on calls from business for more thorough 'cost-benefit' analyses, which the EU executive has thus far only applied to three out of 160 SME-related pieces of legislation, Wörsdörfer admitted. 

Industry representatives at the conference nevertheless acknowledged the "positive efforts" made by the Commission overall. Their main criticism was instead directed at member states for not implementing the EU executive's proposals (EurActiv 09/06/08). 

Wörsdörfer presented data confirming this critique, showing that among the 27 member states ten have still not come up with concrete national targets on cutting red tape to comply with the Commission's target of a 25% reduction by 2012. The culprits are namely Belgium, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Finland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Portugal, Romania and Slovakia. 

Another issue - also aimed at cutting red tape further - which the Commission is likely to take up in the SBA, is the 'only once' principle, which prevents public authorities from requesting documents from a company more than once. 

SMEs attach great importance to this measure since most of them simply cannot provide the manpower to respond to the requests without neglecting their daily businesses, pointed out Ben Butters from Eurochambres, a leading European business association. 

Another proposal heading in a similar direction is the 'Common Commencement Date', meaning that legislation would only come out on certain dates a year. This is also likely to make its way into the SBA, the Commission official indicated. 

Butters pointed to the UK, where two days per year are bookmarked for issuing new legislation, saying the measure had significantly contributed to making the legislative process more predictable. 

Butters and his colleague from the SME Union, Patrick Voller, also lobbied for the establishment of a 'Statute for a European Private Company' aimed at simplifying cross-border activities, in which thus far only 8% of SMEs were involved. 

"For SMEs, the internal market is still far from being reality," Butters pointed out. 

Better access to finance was also at issue, with Wörsdörfer joining ranks with the business community in rejecting calls from some parliamentarians to have fixed public procurement quotas reserved for SMEs as in the US. According to him, 42% of public procurement already goes to SMEs.