The Secretary General of SMEunited, Veronique Willems, stressed, on Friday 11 September, in the EU Council's working group on “competitiveness and growth”, the need to take better account of SMEs and their many constraints in the process of drawing up European legislation and standards.
At the invitation of the German EU Council Presidency for a discussion on the principle of “Better Regulation”, Ms Willems called in particular for the “SME test” - a consultation of companies to assess the impact of EU legislation on their business - to be translated into concrete action and not simply a “box-ticking” exercise.
The Secretary General called for SME interests to be taken into consideration throughout the decision-making process by taking better account of the heterogeneity of SMEs. It is true that the Commission carries out impact studies on SMEs, but these studies are not carried out when the European Parliament and the EU Council table amendments, we are told.
The Secretary General requested that the Regulatory Scrutiny Board examine impact assessments and send them back to the respective services when the SME test is conducted in an insufficient manner. The quality of SME tests is sometimes “questionable“, according to one source.
In addition, Ms Willems suggested that the questionnaires sent out as part of the SME tests should be written in “clear”, jargon-free language and in all the official languages of the Union. She thus stressed the importance of providing feedback to respondents and allowing sufficient time for them to participate in the consultations.
She furthermore stressed the importance of the cooperation of ‘EU SME envoys’ with national SME organisations and of broadening the coverage of the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN), the European network dedicated to the innovation and internationalisation of SMEs. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)