-
SMEs’ European future: Foreign embassies and easy cash?
Special commercial embassies in Brazil and other fast-growing economies, easier terms for banking credit, and new investment funds designed to assist innovative businesses are likely to be touted in a European Commission action plan due later this year.
-
EU to extend microcredit help beyond 2013
The Commission will next week extend a €200 million 'social' micro-financing project helping Roma communities in Bulgaria and a company manufacturing fashion handbags in the Netherlands.
-
SMEs brace for double whammy as credit crunch returns
The worsening situation of European banks is likely to hit hardest on financial flows to small businesses which are already heavily suffering from the consequences of the crisis, policymakers and sector specialists have warned.
-
SME skirmish highlights tension over definition debate
A fight has broken out over how much smaller companies should benefit from the EU's structural funds, highlighting the issues at stake in a forthcoming debate on the definition of SMEs, which is already the subject of fierce lobbying.
-
Envoy calls for European ‘SME brake’ on new laws
EU member states should apply an 'SME test' to ensure that draft laws do not clash with smaller companies' growth, according to proposals by the EU's SME envoy, who also called for diverting research funds to small businesses.
-
SMEs jostle for budget boost in funding ‘jungle’
SMEs jostling for gains in the research budget and changes to the structural funds in the Commission's Multi-Annual Financial Framework (MFF) remain unclear which sectors will scoop the rewards in the complicated EU funding 'jungle'.
-
Entrepreneurship begins at school, argues ERT’s chief
Helping young people to become entrepreneurs starts at school, where companies have a role to play in coaching students to get the skills required to succeed and compete in the world economy, argues Brian Ager, secretary-general of the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT), in an interview with EURACTIV.
-
Professor: ‘Stop paying benefits, start paying companies’
States should transfer their social security payments for the unemployed to companies, so that they can employ the unemployed and maintain skills - even if this would breach trade laws - according to Ton Wilthagen, one of the pioneers in the 1990s of 'flexicurity', a concept that combines job flexibility with security.
-
Envoy: SME funds will not be sector specific
The EU executive and member states should be forced to consider the impact that their laws will have on SMEs before they introduce them, according to Daniel Calleja Crespo, the EU's SME envoy. He also confirmed that extra financing with the EU's new budget will be targeted at any type of SME which has a growth potential and will not only be reserved for innovative or research-led companies focusing on EU priorities.
-
Fund chief: Public finance changes role in crisis
Worsening finance conditions for smaller companies have highlighted a growing need for strategic pan-European efforts. This is why the European Investment Fund is now expanding its role as investor, says Richard Pelly, EIF chief executive.
-
Spelman: Commission should be thinking about Single Market Act III
EU policymakers should already be thinking of a Single Market Act III, says Mark Spelman, vice chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce Executive Council.
-
Keeping smaller businesses strong
The financial and economic crisis is not yet over, with lingering uncertainties about growth, competition and profits. Therefore, stricter credit terms are an important topic for small and medium enterprises, argues Markus Stock.
-
Hahn: Cohesion Policy is Greece’s main public investment
Cohesion Policy will be the main public investment instrument for Greece in the foreseeable future, EU Commissioner for Regional Policy Johannes Hahn told Greek regional governors in Athens. EURACTIV Greece contributed reporting for this article.
-
Brussels wants regions to make better use of EU funds
With the long-term budget topping the EU agenda, European institutions are emphasising the continent’s regions as the battleground where the economic crisis would be won or lost, yet propose to increase conditions laid on growth-oriented funding.
-
Venture capital impetus to counter SME finance malaise
SPECIAL REPORT / Pan-European venture capital and US-style 'angel investors' are set to be boosted to fight a continuing malaise in Europe’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) sector, along with measures to reduce red tape.
-
SMEs to get special research budget, but how much is unclear
SPECIAL REPORT / EU ministers with research portfolios have agreed new funding procedures for SMEs so that they can more easily access funds from the EU’s next framework programme for research – called Horizon 2020 – but the exact sums remain in doubt.
-
New SME finance tools launched amid worsening gloom
SPECIAL REPORT / A new European Commission-backed SME funding instrument, launched last week, seeks to entice increasingly wary banks to back the strapped sector by matching risk associated with innovative companies. But SMEs feel gloomier than ever, new data show.
-
Cooperatives movement suits women and crisis
SPECIAL REPORT / Working in cooperatives is better for women’s chances of promotion, work- life balance, professional development and pay, according to research unveiled yesterday (16 October) in Brussels.
-
Entrepreneurship envoys to fix uneven SME performance
SPECIAL REPORT / Increasing divergence in the performance of Europe’s small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) is contributing to a jobless recovery and, says a new Commission report calling for more cross-border efforts and a new entrepreneurial policy to redress the situation.
-
UK launches €20m low-carbon fund for SMEs
The UK has created a €20 million fund for small and medium businesses to help them switch to low-carbon technologies.
-
Brussels eases grip on local public services
Public services provision in Europe is set to be radically liberalised from bureaucracy but will at the same time come under more scrutiny from the EU executive following two proposals tabled by the European Commission yesterday (20 December).
-
Clearance for common payment area by 2014
Banks and other financial services providers must implement a single European payment area (SEPA) by 2014 following a deal reached yesterday (20 December) by the European Parliament and EU member state representatives.
