EU action plan to improve access to finance for SMEs

The article Access to finance for small businesses – EU Single Market Act brought us to the SMA related Communication from the European Commission:

An action plan to improve access to finance for SMEs; Brussels, 7.12.2011 COM(2011) 870 final
(15 pages; available in 22 EU languages)

In a nutshell (page 1):

The Commission is presenting in this Action Plan the various policies that it is pursuing to make access to finance easier for Europe's 23 million SMEs and to provide a significant contribution to growth.

The Action Plan promises regulatory, financial and other measures to improve the access to finance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).


SEC(2011) 1527

The action plan was accompanied by:

Commission staff working paper Accompanying the document An action plan to improve access to finance for SMEs; Brussels, 7.12.2011 SEC(2011) 1527 final (13 pages; only in English)

The paper discusses the conditions: SMEs' access to lending, venture capital and equity. It then presents EU financial measures for SMEs 2007-2013, before conveniently listing current and planned actions to improve access to finance.


Next steps

The Danish presidency of the EU Council has prepared a note on the follow-up to the recent meetings of the European Council (summits), including the growth agenda, where issues related to the single market are seen as top priorities:

European Council - Follow-up by the Council; Brussels, 19 March 2012 document 7824/12

Paragraph 3 on page 2 offers the following view:

3. The COMPET Council will report in May, as requested by the members of the European Council at their informal meeting of 30 January 2012, on implementation of measures to be taken at European level for boosting the access to finance for SMEs. In this context he COSME programme will be discussed at the May COMPET Council and work will be taken forward rapidly on the legislative proposal for the creation of a EU-wide venture capital regime (part of the twelve priority levers of the Single Market Act).

Here is some introductory information about the proposed Programme for Competitiveness of enterprises and SMEs (COSME) 2014-2020, with further links for those interested.



Ralf Grahn
public speaker on EU affairs

P.S. The multilingual Bloggingportal.eu already aggregates the posts from 944 Euroblogs. They represent an important part of the emerging European online public sphere, discussion across national and linguistic borders. In addition to its other activities, the economic think tank Bruegel runs the collective quality Bruegel blog, divided into thematic sections. Recommended reading.

Among the Euroblogs on Bloggingportal.eu you find my current blog trio, Grahnlaw (recently ranked fourth among political blogs in Finland), the Nordic Grahnblawg (written in Swedish) and Eurooppaoikeus (meaning European Law, in Finnish). I write and speak about democracy and openness in the European Union, but increasingly about the crucial challenges of the global era for Europe: growth (EU2020) and the (digital) single market in the making.

Access to finance for small businesses - EU Single Market Act

In the article Single Market Act COM(2011) 206 we looked at the twelve levers for growth and the key action for each.


Access to finance for SMEs

The first lever in the Single Market Act (SMA) (page 6-7) is Access to finance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). One of the promises was:

SME financing will be the subject of an action plan. It will cover not only access to different financing sources but also SME financing tools directly and the creation of an environment that is conducive to development and growth for SMEs.

SMEs' access to finance

We fast-forward to 7 December 2011, when the DG Enterprise and Industry of the European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB) published the latest SMEs' Access to Finance Survey 2011: short summary and full analytical report.


Action plan for SME finance

On the same day the Commission published (MEMO/11/879) EU Action Plan: helping SMEs access more financial resources, which offers a quick overview of the proposed actions.

For more detail there is the communication from the Commission:

An action plan to improve access to finance for SMEs; Brussels, 7.12.2011 COM(2011) 870 final
(15 pages; available in 22 EU languages), as well as the

Commission staff working paper Accompanying the document An action plan to improve access to finance for SMEs; Brussels, 7.12.2011 SEC(2011) 1527 final



Ralf Grahn
public speaker on EU affairs

P.S. The multilingual Bloggingportal.eu already aggregates the posts from 943 Euroblogs. They represent an important part of the emerging European online public sphere, discussion across national and linguistic borders. One of the most promising fresh entrants is the LSE European Politics and Policy EUROPP blog, where Gareth Harding stated that the European Union is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of its citizens, but also handed out advice on how to turn the tide.

Among the Euroblogs on Bloggingportal.eu you find my current blog trio, Grahnlaw (recently ranked fourth among political blogs in Finland), the Nordic Grahnblawg (written in Swedish) and Eurooppaoikeus (meaning European Law, in Finnish). I write and speak about democracy and openness in the European Union, but increasingly about the crucial challenges of the global era for Europe: growth (EU2020) and the (digital) single market in the making.

EU Stockholm Programme Action Plan: European judicial culture needed?

According to the final draft agenda for the Strasbourg session 22 to 25 November 2010, Monday 22 November the European Parliament plenary is going to discuss the Action Plan Implementing the Stockholm Programme and on Tuesday 23 November the EP is going to vote (pages 3 and 9).

In the background we have the five year strategic guidelines adopted by the European Council in December 2009, with the definitive version published in the Official Journal of the European Union in May (OJEU 4.5.2010 C 115/1):

The Stockholm Programme — An open and secure Europe serving and protecting citizens

Based on the guidelines, we have the action plan to implement the strategic guidelines, proposed by the European Commission in April:

Communication from the Commission: Delivering an area of freedom, security and justice for Europe's citizens - Action Plan Implementing the Stockholm Programme; Brussels, 20.4.2010 COM(2010) 171 final

We also know that the Commission's monitoring system PreLex loses the traces of the action plan after the sour conclusions by the JHA Council 3 June 2010.

Before the Stockholm Programme was adopted, the European Parliament tried to make its voice heard a year ago, when it voted a resolution:

European Parliament resolution of 25 November 2009 on the Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council – An area of freedom, security and justice serving the citizen – Stockholm programme; P7_TA(2009)0090 (procedure 2009/2534(RSP) )

(Yesterday I presented a few extracts of the 25 November 2009 EP resolution relevant to citizens and enterprises, in Finnish on my trilingual blog Grahnlaw Suomi Finland.)


Citizens and businesses

This time around the European Parliament decided to take a closer look at legal issues relevant to EU citizens and businesses active across borders, in an own-initiative report:

Report on civil law, commercial law, family law and private international law aspects of the Action Plan Implementing the Stockholm Programme; A7-0252/2010, 24.9.2010 Committee on Legal Affairs, Rapporteur: Luigi Berlinguer (procedure 2010/2080(INI) ) (20 pages)


European judicial culture

Even if the Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) congratulates the Commission on its ambitious proposed action plan, the report calls for reflection on the future of the area of freedom, security and justice (AFSJ).

Interestingly, the JURI committee takes a very long term view. The beginning of the report is heavily laden with suggestions for discussions and exchanges with judges and practitioners, representatives of legal education and training etc. in order to nurture a European judicial culture.

Later the report discusses proposed actions with more immediate impact on mobile citizens, cross-border consumers and companies active in the internal market, but it may be more opportune to treat these initiatives in the context of the latest policy statements and proposals from the Commission, first collectively and later individually.



Ralf Grahn



J.K. After a long silence the EU Law Blog has returned to the European legal blogging scene. The blog declares: This is a web log about European Union law for students, academics, practitioners and anyone else who may be interested in it. - I hope you are interested and that the EU Law Blog keeps up the good work.

Europe 2020 strategy: Innovation Union - preparation and communication

There is a link to the European Council’s conclusions [to be adopted] 17 June 2010, but otherwise the European Commission’s central website for the Europe 2020 strategy for jobs and growth is still as dead as the dodo.



While waiting for the Commission, the Council, the European Parliament and the member states to start communicating the Europe 2020 strategy in earnest, we continue looking for elements of the flagship initiative Innovation Union.



We already looked at Innovation Union in the light of the Commission’s communication on the Europe 2020 strategy: COM(2010) 2020 final.



With China about to close the innovation performance gap in ten years, one would expect the European leaders to be shaken as well as stirred into action. The Commission’s Work Programme (CWP) for 2010, and especially the so called Roadmap published by the Impact Assessment Board (IAB) on the initiative Research and Innovation Plan added useful elements to our knowledge.



DG Enterprise and Industry



The home page of the European Commission’s Directorate-General Enterprise and Industry offers two links to the Europe 2020 strategy.



The text link takes us to a page with a general description, which mentions the European Council 26 March 2010. It offers a further link to the central Europe 2020 web page we already gave a preliminary death certificate.



The graphic link of DG Enterprise takes us directly to the central Europe 2020 web page, but naturally the contents remain the same.



Do we fare any better if we look under Innovation policies? Future EU innovation policies catches our eye.

Yes, we do find materials on preceding public consultations held in 2009, but nothing really new or concrete about the European plan for innovation (Innovation Union) being prepared for presentation in the autumn 2010.



The website of commissioner Antonio Tajani does not add anything on EU2020.

DG Enterprise and Industry should start communicating comprehensively on the preparation of the flagship initiative Innovation Union.



DG Research




The home page of DG Research tells us that commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn arranged a webcast for EU citizens about Innovation Union 17 June 2010. She discussed with participants in an open and convincing manner, and she has promised to post answers to frequently asked questions she was unable to reply to during the webcast.



There is also a frequently updated Innovation Union Facebook page and a group with 318 members.

This is a good start, and the use of interactive communication and social media is promising.



Still, the Press centre and the Facebook group offer mainly disparate news “shrapnel”. The next step could be to create well structured thematic pages for Innovation Union and to contribute to turning the central Europe 2020 web page into a constantly updated website.




Ralf Grahn

China closes the innovation gap in ten years (Innovation Union in Europe 2020 strategy)

With regard to innovation performance, China is showing a rapid rate of relative improvement, which points to a possible closing of the performance gap with the EU in the near future (10 years under a business-as-usual simple linear extrapolation), says an assessment by European Commission experts.



For an inspired tour of antiquated European mindsets versus real world challenges, you can read the blog post by Jason O’Mahony: As Europeans slowly shuffle off history’s pages...


Time for Europeans to wake up?



Innovation Union



The blog post Europe 2020 strategy: Flagship initiative Innovation Union presented the outline of coming action promised by the European Commission in the Europe 2020 communication COM(2010) 2020 final.



We find no updated information on the Commission’s central Europe 2020 web page yet, in general or with regard to the flagship initiative Innovation Union.



Commission Work Programme


Under the headline Advancing the Europe 2020 flagship initiatives, the Commission’s Work Programme (CWP) for 2010 promises (page 5):

Concrete steps will be taken in the coming months to flesh out the Europe 2020 flagship initiatives, in close cooperation with relevant Council formations and stakeholders. The Commission will set out its proposals by way of the following communications:

-----

– “A European plan for research and innovation” (strategic initiative 11): This "Innovation Union" flagship will set out priorities to improve framework conditions for Europe's research and its capacities for creativity and innovation, including eco-innovation. This will contribute to the planned autumn discussion of the European Council.

-----

Source:



Commission Work Programme 2010: Time to act Brussels, Volume I; 31.3.2010 COM(2010) 135 final (13 pages)


In Annex I (Volume II) a Communication on a European Plan for Research and Innovation is promised during the third quarter of 2010 (page 3), in:




Commission Work Programme 2010 Time to act, Volume II Annexes; Brussels, 31.3.2010 COM(2010) 135 final (44 pages)



European plan for research and innovation assessed



The Impact Assessment Board (IAB) has published a so called Roadmap, a preliminary assessment of the Commission Work Programme initiative Research and Innovation Plan (10 pages). The Commission is expected to adopt the Communication on 7 September 2010.

The Roadmap describes the context, including the long term vision for the European Research Area (ERA).

The main problems are laid out in a matter-of-fact way, including the introductory quote of this blog post, which is found on page 2 of the Roadmap.

The Roadmap then presents the objectives of the Innovation Union initiative, the expected impacts of the European plan for research and innovation, evaluations of previous policies and accomplished impact assessment work, as well as plans for further impact assessment work.

The Roadmap is detailed and full of references to sources, in short, an excellent introduction to the state of research and innovation in Europe, and the need for energetic action.




Ralf Grahn

EU defence industry and market: Is there a future?

A year ago the Commission assessed the prospects of the defence technological and industrial base (DTIB), a prerequisite for the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). Little bang for the buck (or euro), was the finding.

While the defence budget of the United States is “only” twice as large as that of the European Union member states combined, the qualitative differences are much greater. Most of the European defence budgets are swallowed by upkeep of national armies. The USA devotes some 35% of its total budget to investment compared to only about 20% in Europe. The US outspends Europe by six to one in defence research and development (R&D).

Moreover, R&D investment in Europe is fragmented along national lines, leading to duplication and waste of scarce resources.

The common European security interests are fulfilled poorly, but in addition fragmented defence industries and markets face a bleak future.


***

European defence industry

Since defence spending and defence industries are largely in the domain of the member states, the Commission in its Defence package chose a cautious approach to improving the situation.


The main findings as well as the reasons for and policy measures for improvement were laid out in the Communication A strategy for a stronger and more competitive European defence industry (Brussels, 5.12.2007 COM(2007) 764 final) and in two accompanying Staff Working Documents, an impact assessment (SEC(2007) 1596) and an impact assessment summary (SEC(2007) 1597).

The documents are available through the Commission’s DG Industry and Enterprise web page Towards an EU Defence Equipment Policy:

http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/defence/eu_defence_policy.htm

They form the basis for two proposed Directives and a number of issues seen as maturing only in the middle or the long term.

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Why Europe?

The security and prosperity of EU citizens is the short answer to why we need the European Union (a better EU, for sure). But most people need concrete examples of policies where the nation states are increasingly ill equipped to deliver the public goods on their own and where the European Union can (or could) offer more.

Climate change, energy, financial supervision and the euro have been in the headlines lately. They all show the need for more Europe, not less. Defence and related industries are among the long line of other policy areas, where the needs for improved European policies are compelling.

The Communication on the European defence industry is worth reading, and it will serve as the starting point for a couple of blog posts on the proposed legislative measures, including defence procurement.


Ralf Grahn