Hongaars voorzitterschap: midden- en kleinbedrijf heeft politieke steun nodig (en)

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), are in need of political support, explained Zoltán Cséfalvay, Minister of State for Strategy of the Ministry of National Economy. He spoke at the closing day of the conference, “Mobilising SME for the Future of Europe” on 25 May 2011 in Gödöllo. European Commission Vice President Antonio Tajani i, inaugurated a new network of Member States’ SME Envoys.

European enterprises are struggling with a number of problems, including the acquisition of financial resources, extreme administrative burdens, lack of permanent access to the EU’s internal market, and a backlog in terms of innovation, said Zoltán Cséfalvay, listing the principal topics of the informal meeting, held on 13 April by the EU’s ministers responsible for industrial policy. In his speech during the conference, the Minister of State pointed out that the Hungarian Government had also taken action in four areas in order to ease the situation for enterprises, they are, abolishing several minor taxes, reducing the corporate tax rate. The Government is currently working on measures aimed to reduce the administrative burdens of enterprises by 500 billion forints after 2012.

Mr Cséfalvay mentioned the extension of the Széchenyi Card, which assists Hungarian enterprises in obtaining funding, and the Government’s ideas on the new methods of “out-of-bank financing”, as well as the promotion of enterprises, in terms of innovative activities.

The Minister of State highlighted on the Hungarian Presidency making effort to grant enterprises better access to the EU’s internal market. SMEs are “lonely”, because they lack the political support, which could represent their problems, explained Zoltán Cséfalvay adding that this is not only a problem in individual member states, but also at the European Union’s level.

Therefore, the European Commission made a proposal at the initiative of Vice President Antonio Tajani, Commissioner for Industrial and Business Policy, to appoint SME envoys in all Member State. The envoys’ task would be to track the transposition of the Small Business Act, and to keep contact with the parties concerned in the SME sector. The SME envoys held their first official meeting in Gödöllo. “The new SME envoys will ensure that the authorities would first ‘think small’ and then take into account the interests of SMEs for each new law and regulation,” said Mr Tajani, referring to the official launch of the operations of the network of SME envoys. Minister of State Cséfalvay, welcomed the Commission’s proposal and said that the envoys will speak as the “political voice” for SMEs.

The Small Business Act is based on ten principles and the specific policy and legislative steps, which are aimed at their implementation; and it serves to improve the business environment and to remove the obstacles to the growth and job-generation potential of SMEs. SME envoys would maintain contact with the EU level representative organisations of SMEs via the SBA Advisory Group.

According to the Europe figures - Eurostat Yearbook 2010, SMEs make up 99.8 percent of the estimated 20.2 million non-financial business enterprises within the EU-27. SMEs (with fewer than 250 employees), generated 56.9 percent of the value added and employed 67.4 percent of the workforce in the non-financial business economy.