Irish Regions Office Website

July 14, 2008

Regional policy to boost SME prospects

The practical financial opportunities offered by EU Cohesion Policy to national and regional agencies charged with enterprise policy were underlined on 9 July by Regional Policy Commissioner Danuta Hübner in a speech on the Small Business Act. The Commissioner stressed that by promoting "local action", creating network clusters, assisting diversification and innovation and most importantly, facilitating access to finance, Cohesion Policy – which provides €27 billion (7.9% of total community investment) towards supporting SME development – could serve as a "launch pad" to boost the 99% of all EU businesses which provide 2/3 of all private sector jobs. Calling for member states to adapt national Cohesion Policy investments to the benefit of entrepreneurship she pointed out that "with only a small amount of investment, it is possible to achieve a high impact and raise the innovation capacity of small businesses". In reference to SMEs’ role in implementing the Lisbon Strategy for competitiveness, growth and jobs, the Commissioner emphasised a series of groundbreaking knowledge economy projects in promoting innovation which have previously arisen from national authorities use of cohesion funding. €17.5 billion of the SME funding mentioned above is earmarked for technology and innovation actions and the remainder allocated to ICT activities (14%), start-ups (12%) and eco-friendly projects (9%). Further details: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/08/1121&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

Posted by iroronan at July 14, 2008 04:23 PM