Modern Business Responsibility – Avenues for Elevating MSMEs Ability for Successful Transformation

European Economic and Social Committee's opinion on Modern Business Responsibility – Avenues for elevating MSMEs ability for successful transformation (own-initiative opinion).

Key points

The EESC:

• believes that MSMEs need a great deal of support and encouragement to manage the broad entirety of business responsibility. Business organisations in all their forms play an important role in awareness-raising. To ensure the necessary skills and competences, learning/training alliances of MSMEs must be promoted and facilitated, and cooperation must be enhanced between labour market institutions, social partners, professional chambers and associations, and various training entities and CSOs;

• encourages the European Commission (EC), in cooperation with Member States and business support organisations, to constantly raise awareness of the benefits of responsible performance and to maintain and update a collection of good practices of business responsibility in MSMEs;

• calls for simple and practical tools such as checklists, templates and calculators, and alternative scenario analysis to be developed and provided for MSMEs to enhance and help develop their operations and to report on their responsibility commitments and achievements;

• considers it crucial to ensure that the overall policy framework is supportive for MSMEs and avoids complicated requirements – met by MSMEs either directly or through value chains - which may divert resources away from concrete, grass-root level business responsibility measures and result in the “externalisation” of business responsibility in MSMEs;

• welcomes the intention of the EC to launch a public consultation before the end of the year on a non-financial reporting standard applicable to MSMEs on a voluntary basis with the view to adopt it in 2024 and calls for it to be clear and simple, in line with the principle embedded in SME Relief package.