Dear European entrepreneurs,
Dear Members,
Dear friends of Europe’s Mittelstand,
The year that ends in a week will remain a turning point in our memories, dividing the times “before COVID” from those “after COVID“. A year like 2020 that caused so much suffering, fear and sorrow will hopefully not come back again.
Although many concerns for 2021 still withstand, and we are committed to prevent too many, formerly healthy companies from failing, we anyway want to look forward towards the next year with optimism, in the spirit of our long-year president Mario Ohoven that said already in March: this crisis will be a great chance for those that will understand to grasp the new opportunities, and a fatal disaster for those that wait to continue with business as usual.
And if we learned one thing in 2020 it is that the time for business as usual is over. The key word of this year is disruption, particularly for all small and medium-sized companies in Europe and we need also politics to take over this spirit: fast change, new priorities, new ways of doing. For the sake of Europe’s people and its economy.
As European Entrepreneurs, when 2020 started, despite the first concerning news from Wuhan we were focussing on starting 2 new projects – DataSkills4SMEs and European Shared Value Factory 2020 – and closing DigitaliseSME.
We would have never thought that all 3 projects would become a part of our emergency support actions and be so useful in this disruptive times for many of our companies and for ourselves: the great results of DigitaliseSME showed how the digital transformation of SMEs can be triggered quickly and with a low level of public investment – as we would need it now – and DataSkills4SMEs gives our members now the possibility to offer guidance to their associate companies in the jungle of digital competences needed for their digital projects as crisis reaction.
The Foreign Trade and Investment support that we could offer with European Shared Value Factory 2020 not only focussed on new markets in Africa, but allowed us also to immediately do everything differently: we changed rapidly to online meetings with ultimately more than 600 participants from more than 60 countries, and in place of difficult 1:1 matching among companies, we developed in 2 months time a digital match-making platform: African and European Entrepreneurs.
And in the same way as we started to differently implement our projects, we switched immediately to new ways of internal communication: on April 2nd we did our first online General Assembly, and continued to use this new channel for many other online meetings with our members and like-minded partners in Europe.
After a first crisis resolution approved by representatives of 35 SME organisations from all over Europe on April 2nd, calling for action to protect and support SMEs, we launched already on April 17th our SME-friendly Reload Europe Strategy, which we still advocate for. And we can proudly say that we have anticipated many things and that important parts of this strategy are step-by-step taken into account by the EU’s policies.
For example, we have seen a strong increase of testing capacities already during the summer, as we have asked for in April. And bluetooth-based contact tracing apps have at least partly been coordinated among member states, to facilitate cross-border tracing after re-opening the borders and re-activating the Single Marketin full, as we had equally proposed. The member states and the EU decided to mobilise huge amounts of funds with “Next Generation EU” (the socalled Recovery and Resilience Plan), and we continue to monitor that animportant share will reach SMEs and the Self-employed. Provisions for a better pandemics management by the EU have finally been taken and our request to launch astimulus programme for SMEs –Reload SMEs – has been included into ReactEU and in recent calls for proposals of the COSME and Horizon 2020.
These great results did not come without any effort. We did a huge communica-tion effort this year, we wrote many letters to the different EU-Commissioners and MEPs and we met with high level representatives of the EU and of the member states, e.g. the German Secretary of State responsible for SME-policy and Tourism, Mr. Thomas Bareiß, the Deputy Head of Cabinet of Executive Vice-president Dombrovskis, Mrs. Zaneta Vegnere, the Italian Prime Minister Mr. Giuseppe Conte in Rome on July 27th, the Executive Vice-President of the European Commission, Mr. Valdis Dombrowskis with the board, DG GROW’s Director for SME Policy, Mrs. Kristin Schreiber and last but not least with DG REGIO’s Commissioner Mrs. Elisa Ferreira at our General Assembly on Nov. 12.
Part of this great efforts in communication was also the launch of our confederation’s new website in July 2020 at www.european-entrepreneurs.org.
But never trust the situation when everything seems to work out for the better. We had just got a little bit of hope after a not so bad summer, we had just restarted with our activities and tried to help our companies to survive the crisis, lobbying for their interests at many European institutions and in many networks or by creating new opportunities, when the second wave of the pandemic came over Europe and forced many companies again to close or reduce their activities.
And then our president Mario Ohoven died.
The news being spread on Nov. 1st that he had died in a terrible car accident on Oct. 31st near Düsseldorf shoked all our confederation, nobody could really believe it. But the truth was immediately confirmed by his German confederation, the BVMW. And in the following days and weeks countless expressions of esteem and sorrow have reached us and our German colleagues from all over the world.
Mario Ohoven will always remain in our minds and hearts as a strong leader, a person that always used clear words, and that really understood the needs and concerns of Germany’s and Europe’s Small and Medium-sized Enterprises. During our General Assembly all members confirmed their will to hold high this spirit and insisted that Europe’s SMEs need to have a consistent, clear and understandable voice, from SMEs for SMEs, within the European political discourse. We are committed tocontinue and honour Mario Ohoven’s legacy for the best of all European entrepreneurs.
And this is what we want to take with us to 2021: the wish that we all may find a way out of these difficult times, re-inventing ourselves and our businesses, but always remembering that if we want to achieve better conditions for our SMEs we must work together and make our positions clear.
In the name of European Entrepreneurs’ Executive Board, we wish to all of you a Merry Christmas and a safe, healthy and happy New year 2021!
Prof. Maurizio Casasco Walter G. Grupp Stefan Moritz
First Vice-President Secretary General Managing Director
