Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-02-15-Speech-2-627-000"
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"en.20110215.30.2-627-000"2
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"Madam President, honourable Members, I am really delighted that the issue of small and medium-sized enterprises is at the heart of parliamentary debate for the second day in a row. Yesterday evening, we looked at the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) as well as how to help small and medium-sized enterprises and micro-enterprises to access EU financing in the context of the forthcoming Eighth Framework Programme. We also noted what we have already done and what we are currently doing for this category of enterprises.
As I said in my speech – and as I also stated yesterday evening – I think that supporting small and medium-sized enterprises is a priority for a number of reasons. First of all, we cannot but consider small and medium-sized enterprises as an essential tool for recovering from the current crisis. Through the Europe 2020 document, we put the real economy back at the heart of economic policy. Small and medium-sized enterprises are the lifeblood of our real economy and, above all, moving forward, I think that SMEs can also play a crucial social role because they are the ones that will create new jobs in the European Union, even while big industrial corporations are undergoing restructuring.
We therefore need to create the conditions for small and medium-sized enterprises to be competitive. Competitiveness is another word for innovation, and to be innovative, we need to help SMEs to access credit. Thanks to the support of the European Parliament, we have adopted the directive on late payments by public authorities and in business-to-business transactions, which falls under the Small Business Act. This is a fantastic result and I hope that the Member States implement this directive, which is now binding for the whole European Union, within 24 months from last October and perhaps even before the final deadline. This will inject around EUR 180 billion of liquidity into the market, to the benefit of small and medium-sized enterprises.
That is not all. I have also created the SME Finance Forum, as noted in Parliament’s report on policies for SMEs and the CIP. This is a new creation of the Commission, where we will examine the difficulties involved in accessing credit and formulate solutions to these problems. It is not by chance that we have convinced the London Stock Exchange to take part in this initiative for the first time. This is a strong signal from Great Britain too, which is tantamount to powerful support for small and medium-sized enterprises from the world of finance. Therefore, the financial economy is working to support and serve the real economy, which I think is an important sign. I will take steps to continue supporting the work of the SME Finance Forum in terms of access to credit and will also identify all available initiatives, including cross-border venture capital and the attempt to ease the ‘bottlenecks’ between the European Investment Bank and domestic credit institutions, which are the ones that grant the financing in the end.
What should we do to make it easier to access EU financing? We are currently working on the forthcoming Eighth Framework Programme and a number of victories have been won for SMEs. I will repeat what I said yesterday evening because I do not know if the honourable Members here this evening were also here yesterday: regarding the Regulation on the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH), I have cut back registration taxes to 60% for SMEs and 90% for micro-enterprises. I also made sure that the rules for the implementation of the REACH Regulation were translated into all the languages of the European Union. SMEs are therefore seeing signs of real support from this direction as well. It is our intention to do the same for micro-enterprises in the construction sector, too.
I have held quite a number of meetings on microcredit as well. I also examined the issue carefully during a meeting held two weeks ago in Brussels with the representative of the Italian Government’s new microcredit organisation, which looks like a well-run example. I hope to be able to spread knowledge of the best practices of the various Member States in this sector, so that they can be implemented.
In terms of the disparities in the time needed for authorisation, this is a real problem. There is no doubt that we must exert pressure on the Member States to cut red tape. Much is made of European bureaucracy – which certainly has its own burdens – but sometimes bureaucracy in the Member States runs it pretty close. In any case, I think that it is in the interest of citizens to streamline procedures. When we say that we should ‘think small’, we need to make sure that the Member States also apply this test, just as the Commission has begun to. The presentation of the review of the Small Business Act in the various European capital cities will also provide a chance to urge the Member States to reduce the time required to issue authorisations for the creation of SMEs."@en1
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