The SME Chamber organises an informative webinar on the new Skills Pass system
11 April 2024
This morning the Malta Chamber of SMEs organised a webinar for its members in collaboration...
Small Businesses, Big World- A new opportunity for SMEs
18 November 2011
The Commission published its communication on SMEs & internationalisation. Good news for SMEs, is that the Commission will concentrate its efforts on business support measures (ensuring and measuring their effectiveness and on targeting the enterprises that need the most assistance) as well as reform the "Europe Enterprise Network". This network will be changed into a international business portal where all information about existing and new support schemes will be found. The Commission also foresees the establishment of an "Internationalisation Forum" to discuss and exchange best practices.
The objectives of the new EU strategy are the following:
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To provide SMEs with easily accessible and adequate information on how to expand their business outside the EU.
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To improve the coherence of support activities.
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To improve the cost-effectiveness of support activities.
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To fill existing gaps in support services.
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To establish a level playing field and provide equal access for SMEs from all EU Member States.
More concretely, the strategy sets out the following field of actions:
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Strengthening the existing supply of support services in priority markets;
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Improving the governance structure of the Enterprise Europe Network to allow better collaboration with hosting organisations and stakeholders.
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Making support schemes at EU level more consistent to raise their impact; currently there are more than 300 support programmes at national level, often focusing on one growing region only whilst in the meantime new growth regions have emerged.
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Promoting clusters and networks for SME internationalisatin;
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Orchestrating pan-European collaboration in priority markets to make the most of the public funds spent;
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Creating a single virtual gateway to information for SMEs wishing to do business beyond the UE borders;
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Leveraging existing EU policies to accelerate the international growth of European SMEs
