Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of the European economy, and the best potential source of jobs and growth. That is why the Commission has shifted Europe’s SME policy into a higher gear, putting the needs of small business at the heart of everything we do and acting to improve the financial and regulatory environment for them.

We know that over-regulation hits SMEs the hardest, and no less than a 25 per cent reduction in the costs of bureaucracy for entrepreneurs is what we believe is desirable, and possible, in Europe. True to our commitment to “thinking small first”, we are now screening all new EU laws for their friendliness to smaller companies, and we have already scrapped over 60 pending EU laws.

With the specific intention of making life simpler for SMEs, we also plan to simplify 1,400 existing laws, and to make customs rules and form-filling requirements a lot less cumbersome.

Of course, rules are of great importance for the European economy. But as we strive for “better regulation” we are trying not just to strip away the bad, but also to draft intelligent laws for the future. One of our proposals is to make it possible for entrepreneurs to pay VAT on multinational operations through an online one-stop-shop.

Meanwhile, we are also working with national governments to help them achieve the goal they set at the 2006 spring summit, aiming to make it possible to set up a new company anywhere in Europe within one week and through a single point of contact by 2007.

Conscious of the need to give ourselves the financial means to really make a difference, we have increased our funding for SME support.

By the end of the 2007-2013 budgetary cycle, the Commission’s enterprise and industry directorate will be spending 60% more on SMEs than it did in 2006, thanks to some three billion euros from the new Competitiveness and Innovation Programme. Meanwhile, regional development funds, which have channelled 21 billion euros into supporting SMEs over the last six years, will continue to make a big difference, as indeed will our big research and development programmes.

These pages provide you a detailed guided tour of the many measures we already have in place, and the many ways in which we intend to expand and improve them. We are proud of what we do for SMEs and I hope that you will be able to agree with me that the EU is good for SMEs and SMEs are good for Europe!

Günter Verheugen

Vice President and Enterprise and Industry Commissioner 

A Guide to SME Policy

Projects have incuded a series of fact-sheets on various aspects of the EC's policy towards SMEs:

To read the full article just click on the underlined link:

- Protecting your ideas
- Supporting research and innovation
- Helping SMEs go international
- The spirit of entrepreneurship
- Think small first
- Improving access to finance 
- Promoting Responsible Entrepreneurship
- The SME Envoy: European Commission’s   key interface with the SME community
- Thinking big on funding
- Making life simpler for SMEs
- Ensuring fair competition

The Europublic Writers Bureau provided the content for this project  through Mostra, the main contractor to DG Informatics.