Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-09-Speech-3-225"
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"en.20080409.24.3-225"2
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"Mr President, I wish to begin by thanking everybody not only for supporting the proposal in the report but also, and even more, for supporting the SMEs. SMEs are a vital part of the European economy and here, as I have already said, in the Eurostars programme we are talking about SMEs which will be the ‘stars’ of the future.
This is an innovative approach. It is not easy to implement approaches where we combine money from the Member States with Community funding, but it is definitely worthwhile, because that is exactly the direction in which we should go in the future. We are joining the best of EUREKA – flexibility, simplicity, decentralised approach, market orientation – with the best of the Framework Programme: centralised management, common evaluation and common selection. I can assure you that also in the other parts of the Framework Programme we are keeping our eyes very much open for the benefit of the SMEs.
Simplification is the name of the game, so we have introduced, as you are probably aware, a higher funding rate for SMEs than for the rest. So they have a 75% co-funding rate in the Framework Programme, while the rest of the bigger companies have 50%, which means that we are stimulating their participation. We have introduced a guarantee fund, which very much simplifies their participation in the Framework Programme, because the fact that they have to submit some bank guarantees in advance was one of the major problems for SMEs; and we are also about to introduce a ‘unique registration facility’ which will again ease the job because you will have to apply only once and all your data will be stored and the next time you apply this will be done automatically.
Therefore, if we look at the results of the first year – and as you know, we agreed about the target of 15% funding which should go to SMEs from the cooperation part of the programme – we can say that it is working. While in Framework Programme 6 we were not achieving the target, from the first evaluations and first insight into the results, we can see that this figure is closer to 20% than 15%, which is a major step forward.
We are also working in the Commission. I have just come from a meeting of the competitiveness group where we discussed the Small Business Act – that is the working title – where we want to address all the issues connected with SMEs in an organised way. I would also like to mention that, although today we are deciding about financial participation from the Community side, in fact this has already begun, and more than 200 have applied for the first call, which is an important success.
Finally, I should like to mention that I am extremely glad that Luxembourg has decided to join. There is definitely no problem in substance. We should all do our best to make its accession to the programme as quick as possible."@en1
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