Promoting SMEs in Europe with a special focus on a horizontal legislative SME approach and respect of the SBA's "think small first" (Exploratory opinion requested by the Bulgarian Presidency)

Key points

The EESC:

• stresses that SMEs require special attention and invites the European Commission to make the Small Business Act (SBA) and its principles legally binding;
• invites the European Commission and the Council to include implementation of the SBA as a permanent scrutiny exercise in the Semester and Annual Growth Survey, in close cooperation with the representative SME organisations;
• calls for an inclusive, coherent, effective horizontal European SME policy which also takes into account the needs of all the different SME sub-groups and considers it essential to have a definition for each and every of them;
• recommends that the Bulgarian, Austrian and Romanian rotating Presidencies of the EU Council establish and operate a permanent inter-institutional joint “SMEs Advisory Group” with the SMEs' representative organisations.

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