By Stefano Mallia (President of the EESC Employers' Group), Gerardo Cuerva (President of CEPYME) and Petri Salminen (President of SMEunited)

Over the last few years, Europe's micro, small and medum-sized enterprises (MSMEs) have faced the biggest global crises since the Second World War, but have nevertheless shown resilience. Europe cannot afford to allow its SMEs to fail to cope with the ongoing transformations. We have outlined the main challenges for Europe's SMEs below.

The regulatory avalanche is weighing down on SMEs. This is why we are calling for the EU to follow up on the SME Relief Package commitment to put measures in place to ensure that legislation takes into account the needs and specific features of small businesses.

Another major challenge for European SMEs is access to skills. European SMEs face enormous problems in recruiting staff due to demographic change. Action must be taken to implement measures in all areas.

Facilitating access to finance is a third challenge for the coming years. Addressing this challenge means facilitating European SMEs' access to alternative systems of finance and markets and establishing regulations that encourage investment in small businesses, as well as combating the scourge of late payments.

Facilitating the digital and green transitions for businesses is a huge challenge and cannot be undertaken without European SMEs. For this reason, the EU institutions must involve SMEs in these processes and encourage them to play a leading role.

We are also calling for undertaking a reassessment of where we stand on reaching the targets set by the Green Deal. We feel that such an exercise is required to ensure that the targets set are indeed achievable and, where they are not, to engage in discussions with private enterprises to set new targets with realistic timeframes.

None of the above will be possible without a stable economic framework that creates certainty. As economic and trade balances continue to shift, and Europe faces serious competitiveness challenges, we must create a Single Market which allows SMEs to reach their full potential.

Read the full article HERE.