These companies are the engines of new job creation across our countries. We must create a climate which encourages small businesses to grow. Of course small firms and bigger companies will only thrive and deliver the growth we all want to see if the conditions in which they operate are right. That must mean giving renewed impetus to the single market programme. But key areas remain to be completed, such as telecommunications, intellectual property, energy and financial services.
State aids continue to distort competition.
We recognise that some of these areas require careful balancing of the consumer as well as the business interest. But I am confident that this can be done. This agenda is not just about the theory of making markets work. In the UK more than 3 million jobs depend on our trade with other members of the European Union. The economic reform package envisaged for the Lisbon summit would create hundreds of thousands more jobs in the UK, here in France, and right across Europe.