After nearly 1,5 years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, 2 years since inflation is back in Europe, after years of complaints about the ineffective Late Payment Directive of 2011 – but only 1 year after the announcement by President von der Leyen during her 2022 Speech about the State of the European Union– the European Commission came –finally – forward with a so-called SME-Relief Package.
European Entrepreneurs CEA-PME welcomes this package, particularly because it contains requests we have formulated since time and discussed on many levels. This Relief Package, e.g. includes a clear idea of when and how the Once Only Principle that we have asked for again recently in our most industrialized members’ Manifesto of the Real Economy for a Realistic Industry Policy will be put in place. And this includes – again, after more than 10 years, we are asking for it – finally, the possibility of managing the A1 certificate for posted workers online, once only.
We also appreciate the robust position the European Commission has taken regarding late payments, which promises to reestablish with a European Regulation (i.e. not a Directive to be transposed into national law with all the risks and confusion and delays and inequalities between Member States this would have allowed to produce) a fair relationship between big clients and small suppliers. We will stay alert and do what we can to ensure that this new Late Payments Regulation will be approved by the European Parliament and the EU Council as proposed.
The Head Office Tax System – allowing also smaller businesses to interact only with the Tax Authority where the seat of the company is registered, and not also with all authorities in countries where branch offices are in place – is surely a good invention and will help to promote cross-border business as well as lead to a reduction of tax burdens. An issue European Entrepreneurs CEA-PME has already raised at the time of the publication of the Small Business Act in 2004.
Said this, this Relief Package comes finally, as it is high time to help European SME and Mid-Caps to recover a little bit of competitiveness. Other measures are somehow welcome and offer at least some added value, like, for example, the refinancing of the SME Window of the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform STEP under InvestEU with some 3-5 billion Euro or the important review of the SME dimension criteria by the end of 2023, including hopefully at least also Small Mid-Caps under the support schemes of the EU.
BUT: now we wait also for other Directorate Generals of the Commission to deliver, and we expect from President von der Leyen that her words in the 2023 Speech on the State of the EU are not only marketing talk.
Europe’s SMEs need less bureaucracy, fewer reporting obligations, more benefits, and more deals. Not only Green, not only Digital, not World Champions in setting rules that hinder ourselves, but a thorough recovery of competitiveness before it is too late.
We look forward to talking with President von der Leyen during the announced Industry Talks in autumn 2023.
Congratulations 😊