Debate: SME Relief Package
Date: WEDNESDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER 2023
Speaker: Věra Jourová
Language: EN

The Parliament and the Commission had the opportunity to exchange on our shared ambitions before the summer break during the debate on the State of the SME Union. Your call for action in support of SMEs was very clear. With the adoption of the SME relief package earlier this week, we are delivering. We are presenting a comprehensive set of actions to give SMEs the relief they need in the short term and to boost their competitiveness and resilience in the long term. From the corner shop to the tech start-up SMEs are the top priority for this Commission. Across all funding programmes, the EU is dedicating unprecedented financial support to SMEs, amounting to more than EUR 200 billion until 2027. The Commission has been fully committed to helping SMEs compete, innovate and lead the green and digital transitions. The rollout of 150 digital innovation hubs around Europe, helping small businesses adopt digital technologies is just one of many examples, and we are committed to creating a fairer business environment for SMEs. We fully realise that SMEs face major difficulties: the pandemic, Russia’s war against Ukraine, high energy prices, inflation and rising interest rates all have a significant impact on daily business of our SMEs. SMEs have been clear about the main challenges that they are confronted with. First is the regulatory and administrative burden. Second, late payments. Third, access to finance and fourth, access to a skilled workforce. This requires urgent action. We have listened and we have structured the actions in the SMEs Relief Package around these challenges.  On the first one – regulatory and administrative burden – the Commission presented a proposal to simplify taxation for SMEs that are active in multiple Member States. We also reinforced our commitment to better regulation. We are presenting a list of SME-friendly provisions that should be systematically considered in future legislative proposals. We are committed to working with Parliament and the Council on the continuous analysis of SMEs’ impact during the legislative process. We launched the recruitment of an EU SME envoy who will participate in the meetings of the Regulatory Scrutiny Board and we are preparing proposals to reduce reporting requirements, in particular for SMEs. The second thing: the Commission presented a proposal to combat late payments. Half of invoices are not paid on time. This has a major impact on the liquidity of SMEs and can even lead to bankruptcies. The Commission’s proposal offers a simple harmonised approach across the single market with a maximum payment deadline of 30 days for all transactions, plus an effective enforcement framework. The third burden – or issue – was access to finance, so we increased the capacity of the financing guarantee under InvestEU programme by EUR 7.5 billion through the STEP initiative, which is the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform. And we are helping Member States allocate further resources to the SME window of the InvestEU. We want to ensure that public procurement works for SMEs. The fourth matter was skills. I cannot emphasise enough the importance of a skilled and diverse workforce for our small businesses. We are building on our large-scale skills partnership across industry, promoting entrepreneurship, in particular women’s entrepreneurship, and we are preparing proposals to make it easier for SMEs to attract talent from abroad. Honourable Members, with this new SME package, we want to send a strong signal of support to all SMEs. We want to create the optimal conditions to ensure their sustained recovery and to let them reach their full potential.