Brussels, 31/05/2002 (Agence Europe) - Half of Europe's SMEs are involved in socially responsible activities that benefit the local community, such as sponsoring in sports, cultural and health/welfare activities, states a report from the European Commission published on Thursday under the "Observatory of European SMEs 2002" This report, the first to give comparative data at EU level on social and environmental activities of SME, makes an important contribution to a debate that has so far mainly focused on large enterprises. The report's findings will supplement responses to last year's Green Paper on companies' social responsibility and will contribute to the next Commission communication on this subject, expected for the summer. The main findings of the report are: - 50% of European SMEs are already involved in socially responsible activities; - geographically, the share of socially engaged SMEs ranges from 32% in France to 83% in Finland; - support for sports, cultural and health/Welfare activities, which mainly takes the form of do nations, either in cash or in kind, or sponsorships, is the most common type of community involvement; - in most cases, SMEs engage in socially responsible activities on an occasional and one-off basis, without relating them to the core business strategy; - while SMEs state mainly ethical motivations for their involvement, three-quarters are also able to identify business benefits derived from these activities; - the main barriers to involvement are lack of awareness, followed by time or money constraints; - the proportion of European SMEs currently engaged in addressing their environmental problems beyond compliance with environmental rules is limited; - and ethical considerations do not appear to be a relevant driver for the environmental domain. The full text of the report called "European SMEs and social and environmental responsibility" may be consulted at: http: //europa.eu.int/comm/enterprise/enterprise_policy/analysis/observatory.htm