​During the seminar of the ECON Commission on September 23  2022 in Zwolle (The Netherlands), members of the Committee of the Regions discussed Regions and cities supporting the sustainable and resilient growth of SMEs. They highlighted in the debate a deep crisis characterized by serious disruptions in the supply chain and in the labor market. To mitigate the effects of the crisis on SMEs, the EU took unprecedented measures by combining emergency measures targeting the short term (liquidity and employment schemes, temporary state aid frameworks) and the long term (NextGenerationEU).

Mr. Tadeusz Truskolaski, the President of Białystok and the EA Group coordinator to the ECON Commission, took part in the first session on European policy actions for stronger and more resilient SMEs in an increasingly unstable world.

He agreed that micro, small and medium-sized enterprises are the salt of our earth. Enterprises with up to 250 employees and a turnover of less than EUR 50 million represent 99% of all enterprises in the EU. They are responsible for more than half of the EU's GDP. It is a very important group, albeit highly diversified. He listed the tools prepared in the EU supporting selected areas of SME operations, such as: Enterprise Europe Network; Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs; Access2Finance; Access2Markets and eCertis

In his speech, he focused on the challenges and problems of SMEs: "Please note how dramatically the situation of companies has changed over the last three years, and how much the scale of challenges and problems in the SME sector has increased. for business has not been in Europe for decades and this applies to small and medium-sized companies from all European countries. "

Answering the question: what is the source of this uncertainty for entrepreneurs at the moment? The president said: "First, the growing problems with the availability of credit and debt service, record energy prices, late payments, high inflation and a surge in costs of doing business, the war in Ukraine. regulations and growing distrust of entrepreneurs in governments and offices ".

He also asked a question the European Commission: "What is it going to do to actually help these many entrepreneurs today who are now focused on surviving next winter instead of investing and developing?"

In 2019, I had the pleasure to be the rapporteur for the opinion on the new European strategy for SMEs. In working on this opinion, we focused on the best possible preparation of the new Community framework for cohesion policy in order to better serve the needs of enterprises. We postulated, inter alia, greater flexibility between funds, redirection of more funds from operational programs for the SME sector and simplification of procedures for obtaining funds. We required standardization and integration of various European instruments and support programs for SMEs.

As rapporteur for the Committee of the Regions on SMEs, he agreed with the European Commission that regulatory differences are particularly important for SMEs, including start-ups and scale-ups, innovators and promoters of new business models. "I would like to emphasize that SMEs, in particular, have limited administrative and human capacity to deal with complex bureaucracy; the main barrier to cross-border cooperation in the single market is the A1 certificate, for which there are time-consuming formalities to be completed in the case of posting of workers, even in the case of regular posting of workers to a neighboring country. These formalities could, as a consequence, significantly reduce cross-border activities and thus significantly hamper the functioning of the single market. A1 in border regions ”.