Brussels, 22/11/2007 (Agence Europe) - There is “no sense in trying to introduce quotas for small and medium-sized enterprises” (SMEs) in the “Small Business Act” (SBA) to be proposed by the European Commission “in spring 2008”, to support the development of SMEs, said Günter Verheugen, the commissioner for enterprise and industry, speaking on Thursday 22 November after the Competitiveness Council. He takes the view that European SMEs already benefit from a “much larger share (of public contracts) than American SMEs”, although he acknowledges, without going into any details, that “there are things to be done” in this field. This position echoes that of Commissioner McCreevy, who is tasked with internal market issues, and who takes the view that setting in place quotas is a form of economic protectionism (see EUROPE 9357).
Mr Verheugen listed “the main chapters” which will make up the future European-level SBA: - the environment, in which SMEs are evolving, “including taxation”; - access to funding; - access to markets, covering both the markets of the other member states and those of third countries; - “turning ecological challenges into economic opportunities”; - a package of legislative measures making life easier for SMEs; - exempting SMEs from various requirements normally incumbent on businesses, by means of the principle of subsidiarity.
The convergence of opinions is increasing “for a 'Small Business Act' at European level” as opposed to the inclusion of an SBA in the framework of negotiations at the World Trade Association (WTO), said Jean-Pierre Jouyet, French Secretary of State for European Affairs. For the time being, “there are no proposals on the table” from the Commission on reserving public procurement contracts for SMEs, he acknowledged, nonetheless going on to stress that the privileged access of “technological start-up companies” to public orders should be possible.
In the plank of these conclusions given over to the policy targeting SMEs, the Competitiveness Council favourably welcomed the Commission's intentions of presenting a European-level SBA. For the time being, it goes no further than to call on the member states to improve the access of their SMEs to public procurement contracts, by establishing “specific strategies” and by bringing in measures aiming to promote “opportunities” linked to public procurement, and “access to information on tenders”.
Like Canada, South Korea and Japan, the United States has the option of reserving public contracts for their national SMEs, in line with a clause of the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) at the WTO (see EUROPE 9500, 9364). “If other nations can reserve a share of their public contracts for their SMEs, why cannot Europe?”, asked French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in a speech before the European Parliament. Various member states, including France and Germany, are currently negotiating with their European partners over the possibility for the EU to negotiate a similar clause for itself - without success as yet. (M.B.)