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.

European Central Bank: New TARGET2 and Eurosystem guidelines

Two new Guidelines by the European Central Bank (ECB) have been published.

TARGET2

Annexes II, III and IV to Guideline ECB/2007/2 have been amended in accordance with the Annex to the Guideline of the European Central Bank ECB/2009/9 of 7 May 2009 amending Guideline ECB/2007/2 on a Trans-European Automated Real-time Gross Settlement Express Transfer system (TARGET2).

Guideline ECB/2009/9 was published in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) 19.5.2009 L 123/94.



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Eurosystem

Amendments have been made to Guideline ECB/2000/7 of 31 August 2000 on monetary policy instruments and procedures of the Eurosystem to allow access to Eurosystem open market operations and standing facilities by credit institutions which, in view of their specific institutional nature under Community law, are subject to scrutiny of a standard comparable to supervision by competent national authorities.


The amendments are enacted by the Guideline of the European Central Bank ECB/2009/10 of 7 May 2009 amending Guideline ECB/2000/7 on monetary policy instruments and procedures of the Eurosystem, published OJEU 19.5.2009 L 123/99.



Ralf Grahn

ECB: TARGET2-Securities Programme Board

A further step on the road to an operational borderless pan-European cash and securities settlement system.

See the Decision of the European Central Bank ECB/2009/6 of 19 March 2009 on the establishment of the TARGET2-Securities Programme Board, which has been published in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) 22.4.2009 L 102/12.



Article 1
T2S Programme Board

1. The T2S Programme Board shall be established as a streamlined management body of the Eurosystem with the task of developing proposals for the Governing Council on key strategic issues and executing tasks of a purely technical nature in relation to T2S.

2. The mandate of the T2S Programme Board, including its objectives, responsibilities, tasks, composition, working procedures, and budget, shall be as set out in the Annex to this Decision.

3. The names and resumés of candidates to be considered for appointment to the T2S Programme Board members shall be sent by members of the Governing Council to the Executive Board so that they are received no later than 8 April 2009. On the basis of such proposals, the Governing Council shall appoint members of the T2S Programme Board on 23 April 2009.

4. The T2S Programme Board shall commence work from mid-May 2009.

5. The T2S Programme Board shall communicate its agenda, a summary of its meetings and relevant documentation in relation to its meetings to the members of the PSSC to allow the latter to provide input to the T2S Programme Board.


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TARGET2 – cash and securities settlement

The appointment of the TARGET2-Securities Programme Board is a further step to make the system operational:

At its meeting of 6 July 2006, the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) decided to explore, in cooperation with central securities depositories (CSDs) and other market participants, the possibility of setting up a new Eurosystem service for securities settlement, to be called TARGET2-Securities (T2S). As part of its tasks in accordance with Articles 17, 18 and 22 of the Statute of the ESCB, the Eurosystem envisages that T2S will be a service based on a single platform allowing for core, neutral and borderless pan-European cash and securities settlement, which will be offered to CSDs to enable them to provide their customers with harmonised and commoditised delivery-versus-payment settlement services in central bank money in an integrated technical environment.



Ralf Grahn