Brussels, 15/11/2002 (Agence Europe) - On 14 November 14 the Commission adopted a Communication on "A Better Environment for Companies", which will be submitted to the Competitiveness Council on 26 November. This will introduce a new enterprise policy instrument containing quantitative objectives, including 70 national objectives presented by the Member States committed to attaining these objectives. By improving the policy follow-up and facilitating the examination of the strategies, these objectives are expected to help the EU achieve an approach that is close to the commitments made at the European Council of Lisbon in making the knowledge based EU economy the most dynamic in the world by 2010. According to the Commission, "for European companies, this constitutes a clear sign that concrete commitments have been made to improve their environment".
Quantitative objectives presented in the Communication deal with several areas of enterprise policy covered by the "enterprise policy score board". They include innovation, the regulatory environment, access to finance, enterprise spirit and human capital. They are also connected to very specific indicators on the "score board" and are designed to guide policy, improve follow-up and facilitate strategy assessment. In the field of enterprise sprit, for example, the quantitative objectives will cover aspects such as the number of new companies created every year and the number of self-employed. The Commission considers that these objectives will help it to benchmark more effectively and exchanges in best practices. In compliance with the open co-ordination method, the Communication proposes to develop objectives by examining and evaluating policy implementation and their accomplishment. The objectives have already been included in the "enterprise scoreboard for 2002" and in the annual benchmarking of enterprise policy indicators in Member States. The score board for this year also included indicators for candidate countries and sustainable development. Erkki Liikanenn, European Commissioner for enterprise, declared on Wednesday that, "The adoption of these policy objectives demonstrate that Member States are determined to advance on the road outlined at Lisbon…I am pleased that Member States have co-operated with the Commission in the development of this initiative and that a good number of them have announced the objectives. This will now mean ensuring their concrete implementation and follow-up measures".