Brussels, 25/07/2006 (Agence Europe) - The European Association of craft, small and medium-sized enterprises (UEAPME) has welcomed the new guidelines adopted by the European Commission on 19 July to encourage risk capital investment in small and medium-sized enterprises (see EUROPE 9236). UEAPME says in a press release that it is a “significant improvement over the 2001 communication” which will help to compensate the regulatory and market failures in the innovation area. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) welcome particularly the simplified notification procedure planned for investments complying with a series of conditions, especially investments below €1.5 million per SME per year. They regret, however, that the Commission did not go further in the simplification procedure and that the guidelines focus only on risk capital measures for innovative and fast-growing SMEs, and not for all SMEs, which all need better access to debt financing measures.