Mr President, on behalf of the Socialist Group, I very much support this report and in particular the initiatives behind the ETF Start-up Facility and the Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise Guarantee Facility. I am sure there is a shared opinion across this House of how important small businesses are. In my own country, the United Kingdom, the small business population has actually increased in size by one half since 1980 and there is now one small business for every 13 adults in the population. Small businesses are important not just for jobs but also for trade in this European Union. I recall talking with the counsellor in the British Embassy dealing with Belgium and the Benelux countries and exports into those countries, who told me that the vast majority, over 90% of the enquiries which he deals with, are not from large companies seeking to export but from small businesses. So that is very relevant to us in this House too. It is relevant because of the Lisbon process. We welcomed the conclusions from the Lisbon Summit last year: the move towards flexibility, the move towards entrepreneurship, towards innovation that were reflected there. These facilities should be seen very much as being at the heart of trying to achieve those economic goals. I would also like to change past practice by congratulating Mr Bushill-Matthews. I have sat in the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs with him for the last year or so and I have heard him make the same speech time after time about de-regulation and too much bureaucracy at European level. He has actually come up with something constructive here, so well done Mr Bushill-Matthews. Nice to see that you can do some work, or at least others can do it on your behalf. I particularly congratulate you on your conclusions regarding the need for more transparency and speed – absolute support for that – and on the importance of the high technology sectors – yes, but not just those. Also, I am very surprised to see you putting emphasis on the need to increase female participation in small businesses. Congratulations to you for supporting that. I would have liked to see more on the social economy. Our cooperative businesses should be seen fair and square as part of the small business sector. They are particularly important in terms of job creation amongst disadvantaged groups in the labour market. They are particularly important in terms of socially useful employment and it is an omission that they are missing from the report. They should not be treated differently; they should be given extra help. Perhaps the Commission could comment on that at the close of the debate. I would also like to particularly support Amendment No 3 from the Socialist Group. We will be supporting all of the amendments to the effect that bank guarantees behind venture capital are still far too strict, far too conservative and actually prevent entrepreneurs from creating jobs in the UK and in other European countries. Let me conclude by saying that yesterday the UK Government published Think small first, a document about ensuring that every department of government thinks about small businesses, not just about the availability of finance that we are discussing in this debate but about the overall macroeconomic framework and the sorts of advice and skills that they need to support them and become prosperous. We in this European Union should follow that lead and ensure that every Directorate-General, every service of the European Union puts small businesses first.

Political group: PSE