Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-10-24-Speech-1-109-000"
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"en.20111024.15.1-109-000"2
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"Mr President, honourable Members, first, I must apologise for the absence of my colleague, Mr Tajani, who would have liked to have followed these issues very closely and proactively, as you know. He has been held up this evening by a G20 preparatory meeting. He has asked me to give you his analysis and to listen to you on an issue in which I myself am involved as the Commissioner for the Internal Market, as you can well imagine. I will also begin by thanking Ms Tzavela and Mr Theurer for having taken the initiative just now to question the Commission about the Small Business Act dossier.
During that debate on the future financial perspective, we also proposed that the budget allocated to supporting SMEs should be doubled. We will also take care to ensure that those funds are allocated, first and foremost, to SMEs that are in the initial growth phase, which is often the most sensitive and most fragile phase for them.
Those funds will be useful to us, but we are also working on tools to solve funding accessibility problems at their source, with measures in three areas: venture capital, stock markets and bank credit. These are issues in which I take a more personal interest, as you know, within the context of my internal market and financial services responsibilities.
In the Single Market Act, we proposed legislation to encourage the mobility of venture capital funds in Europe, which we are going to present in the next few weeks. On the basis of this measure, I and my colleagues, and, in particular, Mr Tajani, shall be looking very closely at the idea of creating a European venture capital fund.
My services and I are also working on ways of mitigating the threshold effects that are preventing a very large number of SMEs from being able to launch themselves on the stock exchange, and on ways of increasing liquidity in these markets, which is currently too low.
Ms Tzavela, you also mentioned access to bank credit. We are well aware that one of the consequences of the crisis is that this bank credit has been restricted, and we have an extremely demanding dialogue with the banks. I am also very mindful of the fact, ladies and gentlemen, that the legislation that we draft, that we present, such as that on the implementation of the Basel rules on non-prudential capitalisation funds and liquidity, which I presented on 20 July, should have special regard to small establishments that are often – on the ground, in the regions, in your countries – banking establishments: there are 8 300 banks in Europe, and they are the ones that finance the real economy, as we know.
Attention will also be paid to SMEs and their innovative role in the future Horizon 2020 – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. Still in the context of the Seventh Framework Programme for Research, and with the specific aim of supporting the risk-sharing finance facility, in early 2012, we are going to launch a new project to make it easier for SMEs that are engaged in research and innovation activities to access bank loans. This new facility will be allocated a budget of EUR 120 million.
We are also going to continue our work to encourage SMEs to participate in European funding programmes – I am thinking, in particular, of the Structural Funds here. My colleague, Johannes Hahn, is particularly concerned with ensuring that these programmes become more accessible to SMEs. I am monitoring this issue from the point of view of public procurement, but it is also important to facilitate SME access through the Structural Fund regulations.
Reducing the administrative burden on SMEs is another major priority. We have an action programme to reduce these burdens, which will come to an end in 2012. We are on course to meet the target to which we have committed ourselves of reducing them by 25%. I believe we could even exceed it if the proposal that we have made to exempt micro businesses from the accounting rules were to be adopted quickly.
All in all, we have already presented more than 200 proposals to simplify the existing legislation and reduce administrative burdens by more than 31%. The proposals that have been adopted thus far represent a 22% reduction, or thereabouts, in the administrative burdens on businesses, and we are going to continue.
Priority number three: the Commission intends to present a new, more consistent strategy to make it easier for SMEs to access public procurement markets. We have just discussed this at length, so I will not go back over it. However, it comes under the simplification of public procurement markets, of public procurement in general, which is a definite priority for the Commission, or for me in any case, as I said earlier. I should also like us to encourage this reciprocity of access where international markets are concerned; this is the aim of the transposition of the multiannual Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) into EU law, which Mr De Gucht and I will be proposing to you.
I wish to point out, following on from the debate that we have just had on public procurement, that the 21 million small and medium-sized enterprises account for 99% of European businesses and that almost 90% of them contribute to the creation of new jobs. Ninety-nine per cent of Europe’s economic fabric is made up of these SMEs, which are therefore the key to the growth that we want to rebuild or consolidate, and to our dynamism and our competitiveness.
In order to open up to SMEs markets that should be accessible to them, we have also proposed to extend the European standardisation system to cover services, while further opening up the framework for the development of standards to SMEs.
To be more specific, in the long run, we hope that a culture of partnership can be established between all the stakeholders and that the problems on the ground can be resolved. We have no business drafting theoretical or ideological legislation. We must draft very practical legislation for SMEs.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would say the following in particular to the two MEPs who have tabled these two very useful questions: if you read carefully the Single Market Act and the 12 key proposals that I and around 10 of my colleagues have identified, as well as the 50 proposals that we are implementing, you will see that all of this legislation is proactive legislation aimed at facilitating the work of SMEs. This also applies to issues that I have not had the time to mention, such as the European patent, which Parliament supports and which is often inaccessible to SMEs today on account of its cost.
My colleague recently appointed a Commission representative, Mr Calleja Crespo, to monitor the implementation of EU measures on all SME-related issues with the Member States. He is supported at national level by the ambassadors for SMEs. The first meeting of this network took place in Brussels on 14 September and mainly focused on the issue that you have raised, Ms Tzavela; namely, access to credit.
Ladies and gentlemen, close cooperation between all the European and national institutions is crucial to the effective implementation of this Small Business Act and, more generally, of the Single Market Act and all these initiatives, and to enabling European SMEs to withstand this crisis. In order to successfully overcome this crisis and win the growth, employment and competitiveness battle, it is imperative that SMEs hold their own and, to ensure this, we must help them in any way we can.
As you both pointed out, however, these businesses are experiencing great difficulty, particularly at the moment, and, as SMEs, they are encountering too many obstacles that are restricting their mobility as exporters and traders within the internal market. That is precisely why I and my colleagues, and particularly Mr Tajani, have proposed in the Single Market Act legislation to help those who wish to innovate, export, become mobile and trade, which is obviously the case with SMEs.
Clearly, there are many other difficulties, which I will mention briefly: administrative burdens, lack of liquidity, problems in accessing finance – you made that point, Ms Tzavela – lack of visibility in the market with regard to potential investors. They are all hindering the development of SMEs. According to an impact assessment on SMEs and the labour market, the crisis has cost nearly 3 million jobs in European SMEs. That is why we must act.
This is not a new issue. It was the subject of work carried out as early as in 2008, when a cross-cutting, ‘tailor-made’ approach for SMEs resulted in the adoption of the Small Business Act. The latter has enabled significant progress to be made. I should like to cite some examples: the timescales and the costs necessary to start a business have been reduced, and we have adopted important legislative acts, such as the directive on combating late payment and the directive on reduced VAT rates.
Furthermore, the SME test that you yourself mentioned, Mr Theurer, has yielded some positive results. It has been in place since 2009 and is duly applied to proposals having an impact on businesses, something which has also been recognised in a recent study by the European Parliament. Such tests have been carried out, in particular, for the report on the Late Payment Directive and on the ‘standardisation package’. Nevertheless, Mr Theurer, I believe that we must go further, as you yourself requested, and, on Mr Tajani’s initiative, the Commission will be organising a workshop in every Member State in order to roll out these SME tests as much as possible.
When the Small Business Act was reviewed in February, the Commission pledged to enhance this test, and, at the June European Council, President Barroso gave some indication of the direction in which we are working specifically to enhance the part of the SME test that concerns micro businesses. Greater visibility of this test is something else that we want to ensure.
Ladies and gentlemen, this tool, the Small Business Act, is very useful to us when it comes to maintaining the consistency of our work to support SMEs, and it must be enhanced in a number of areas, which I should like to mention quickly.
The first priority is the programme to support the competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises. The Commission has proposed a budget of EUR 2.7 billion to support SMEs and, in this regard, we hope that we can count on the support of Parliament in the next financial perspective."@en1
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