The Renew Europe group in the European Parliament published on Monday 13 July a policy position to support European SMEs in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, in particular to facilitate their access to finance.
In its paper, the group suggests the actual application of an ‘SME Test’ to EU legislation upstream and downstream to take into account the situation of SMEs. It wants to strengthen the internal market, while ensuring regulatory stabilisation and a fair application of State Aid rules to avoid excessive market distortions.
Above all, MEPs want to take action on access to finance, but also to combat late payments, which undermines SMEs’ operations. Renew Europe thus advocates a pan-European credit referral system to which SMEs could voluntarily subscribe when an application for a bank loan has been rejected. Such a system could then identify other sources of funding appropriate to the risk profile, including, for example, venture capital and community funding.
For more information: https://bit.ly/2ZphhbL (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)