During a visit to Tunis on Wednesday 21 March, European Commissioner for Neighbourhood Policy Johannes Hahn announced a new European support programme for start-ups and innovative businesses.
"The EU will soon launch a new initiative to help up to 1,000 start-ups, with a budget of around €25 million", he announced in Tunis. The programme is due to be implemented in 2019. Hahn said that the goal of the programme is to support start-ups financially so they can develop prototypes and then seek financing. It should also help common work spaces, enterprise laboratories, business incubators and universities support the creation of partnerships with European business incubators and the development of new projects throughout Tunisia.
Hahn stated that since 2012, around 60,000 young Tunisians had benefitted from micro-credits to launch or grow their SMEs.
He also announced that he would ask his teams to offer opportunities to people working in start-ups so they can travel in Europe, study and see what development activities are there for them to be able to import them to Tunisia.
As part of this, Hahn hailed the efforts for the development of draft legislation on promoting start-ups (the Start-up Act), saying he looked forward to seeing this legislation adopted by the Tunisian Parliament.
More generally, Hahn called for reforms in the country to be continued. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)