Small Business Act for Europe

Last updated

The Small Business Act for Europe(SBA) is a package of principles put forward by the European Commission in 2008, designed to assist small businesses within the European Union (EU). [1] The package contains ten "guiding principles intended for adoption "at the highest political level" across the EU. [2] It is not a legislative act as such.

Contents

Background

In June 2008, the Commission adopted a communiqué entitled "Small Business Act" for Europe to the European Council, European Parliament, European Economic and Social Committee, and the Committee of the Regions. [3] Its aim was to provide a policy framework covering small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) which could improve competitiveness and promote entrepreneurship. Rather than being a legislative act, it contains provisions applying to small firms, directed at governments and institutions to "think small first" when establishing policy and law.

Content

The SBA invites the Commission and EU Member States to adopt:

The act is intended to benefit independent companies with fewer than 250 employees (99% of EU businesses). [5] It provides an "SME test" to ensure SMEs are taken into account at an early stage of the policy-making process. As such, all new administrative or legislative proposals are to be subjected to an SME impact review. Countries including Belgium, Finland, Denmark, and Germany have added this test into their national decision-making processes. The Act also carries a provision to appoint SME envoys, whose role is to liaise between the EC and SMEs. The SBA promotes the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs program (participants spend up to six months working in a different country's SME), and creates Market Access Teams in select export markets, particularly China and India. [6] The "Code of Best Practices" published in 2008 aimed to show how EU member states could make SME-friendly use of the provisions of the public procurement directives when awarding contracts. [7] The "Best Practices" document noted that consultation regarding its contents had shown that changes in the procurement "culture" were more important than legislative changes in promoting better SME access to public sector business opportunities. [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Directive (European Union)</span> Legislative act of the European Union

A directive is a legal act of the European Union that requires member states to achieve particular goals without dictating how the member states achieve those goals. A directive's goals have to be made the goals of one or more new or changed national laws by the member states before this legislation applies to individuals residing in the member states. Directives normally leave member states with a certain amount of leeway as to the exact rules to be adopted. Directives can be adopted by means of a variety of legislative procedures depending on their subject matter.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are businesses whose personnel and revenue numbers fall below certain limits. The abbreviation "SME" is used by international organizations such as the World Bank, the OECD, European Union, the United Nations, and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

A privacy policy is a statement or legal document that discloses some or all of the ways a party gathers, uses, discloses, and manages a customer or client's data. Personal information can be anything that can be used to identify an individual, not limited to the person's name, address, date of birth, marital status, contact information, ID issue, and expiry date, financial records, credit information, medical history, where one travels, and intentions to acquire goods and services. In the case of a business, it is often a statement that declares a party's policy on how it collects, stores, and releases personal information it collects. It informs the client what specific information is collected, and whether it is kept confidential, shared with partners, or sold to other firms or enterprises. Privacy policies typically represent a broader, more generalized treatment, as opposed to data use statements, which tend to be more detailed and specific.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Regulatory Flexibility Act</span>

The Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) is perhaps the most comprehensive effort by the U.S. federal government to balance the social goals of federal regulations with the needs and capabilities of small businesses and other small entities in American society.

Government procurement or public procurement is undertaken by the public authorities of the European Union (EU) and its member states in order to award contracts for public works and for the purchase of goods and services in accordance with principles derived from the Treaties of the European Union. Such procurement represents 13.6% of EU GDP as of March 2023, and has been the subject of increasing European regulation since the 1970s because of its importance to the European single market.

Government procurement or public procurement is when a governing body purchases goods, works, and services from an organization for themselves or the taxpayers. In 2019, public procurement accounted for approximately 12% of GDP in OECD countries. In 2021 the World Bank Group estimated that public procurement made up about 15% of global GDP. Therefore, government procurement accounts for a substantial part of the global economy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Capital Requirements Directives</span>

The Capital Requirements Directives (CRD) for the financial services industry have introduced a supervisory framework in the European Union which reflects the Basel II and Basel III rules on capital measurement and capital standards.

Information technology risk, IT risk, IT-related risk, or cyber risk is any risk relating to information technology. While information has long been appreciated as a valuable and important asset, the rise of the knowledge economy and the Digital Revolution has led to organizations becoming increasingly dependent on information, information processing and especially IT. Various events or incidents that compromise IT in some way can therefore cause adverse impacts on the organization's business processes or mission, ranging from inconsequential to catastrophic in scale.

Design for All in the context of information and communications technology (ICT) is the conscious and systematic effort to proactively apply principles, methods and tools to promote universal design in computer-related technologies, including Internet-based technologies, thus avoiding the need for a posteriori adaptations, or specialised design.

All European countries show eGovernment initiatives, mainly related to the improvement of governance at the national level. Significant eGovernment activities also take place at the European Commission level as well. There is an extensive list of eGovernment Fact Sheets maintained by the European Commission.

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are defined by the European Commission as having less than 250 employees, independent and with an annual turnover of no more than €50 million or annual balance sheet of €43 million.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Late Payment Directive</span>

The Late Payment Directive, 2011/7/EU is a Directive of the European Union concerning commercial late payments. It replaced the previous Late Payment Directive 2000/35/EC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital Single Market</span> European Commission market policy

The term digital single market refers to the policy objective of eliminating national or other jurisdictional barriers to online transactions, building on the common market concept designed to remove trade barriers in other commercial fields.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space</span> Directorate-General of the European Commission

The Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space is a department of the European Commission.

The European Accessibility Act is a directive of the European Union (EU) which took effect in April 2019. This directive aims to improve the trade between members of the EU for accessible products and services, by removing country specific rules. Businesses benefit from having a common set of rules within the EU, which should facilitate easier cross-border trade. It should also allow a greater market for companies providing accessible products and services. Persons with disabilities and elderly people will benefit from having more accessible products and services in the market. An increased market size should produce more competitive prices. There should be fewer barriers within the EU and more job opportunities as well.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Capital Markets Union</span> European economic policy initiative

The Capital Markets Union (CMU) is an economic policy initiative launched by the former president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker in the initial exposition of his policy agenda on 15 July 2014. The main target was to create a single market for capital in the whole territory of the EU by the end of 2019. The reasoning behind the idea was to address the issue that corporate finance relies on debt (i.e. bank loans) and the fact that capital markets in Europe were not sufficiently integrated so as to protect the EU and especially the Eurozone from future crisis. The Five Presidents Report of June 2015 proposed the CMU in order to complement the Banking union of the European Union and eventually finish the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) project. The CMU is supposed to attract 2000 billion dollars more on the European capital markets, on the long-term.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015</span> United Kingdom legislation

The Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015, also referred to as SBEE, received Royal Assent in March 2015. Its contents include regulatory reform, public sector procurement and company director disqualification issues.

At around £290 billion every year, public sector procurement accounts for around a third of all public expenditure in the UK. EU-based laws continue to apply to government procurement: procurement is governed by the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, Part 3 of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015, and the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations of 2015 and 2016. These regulations implement EU law, which applied in the UK prior to Brexit, and also contain rules known as the "Lord Young Rules" promoting access for small and medium enterprise (SMEs) to public sector contracts, based on Lord Young's Review Growing Your Business, published in 2013.

References

  1. ↑ Desquitado, Tara (7 June 2017). "5 Ways Europe Prioritizes SMEs, The 'Backbone' of its Economy". The Sociable. Retrieved 8 January 2018.
  2. ↑ European Commission, "Think Small First": A Small Business Act for Europe, Press Release IP/08/1003, published 25 June 2008, accessed 18 January 2024
  3. ↑ COM(2008) 394 final
  4. ↑ Bruno Dallago; Chiara Guglielmetti; Michele Rondinelli. 2012. The Consequences of the International Crisis for European SMEs: Vulnerability and Resilience. Routledge. pp. 95–96. ISBN   978-0-415-68085-1.
  5. ↑ Laura Gavinelli, 2016. Business Strategies and Competitiveness in Times of Crisis: A Survey on Italian SMEs. Springer. p. 229. ISBN   978-1-137-57810-5.
  6. ↑ Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: U.S. and EU Export Activities, and Barriers and Opportunities Experienced by U.S. Firms, Inv. 332-509. DIANE Publishing. pp. 2–3. ISBN   978-1-4578-1598-0.
  7. ↑ European Commission, Small Business Act: Commission publishes new practical guidelines for Member States on how to make public procurement more SME-friendly, MEMO/08/435, published 25 June 2008, accessed 6 February 2024
  8. ↑ European Commission, European Code of Best Practices Facilitating Access by SMEs to Public Procurement Contracts, Commission Staff Working Document SEC(2008) 2193, pp. 4-5, published 25 June 2008, accessed 6 February 2024


This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.