New Start for Start-ups

The European Commission is doing its best to support growth in the EU by various means, from extending the Juncker’s Investment Plan for Europe to its continuous effort to lift various single market barriers.

On the 22nd of November, the Commission added one more initiative that targets start-ups and scale-ups. The main idea of the initiative is to eliminate obstacles that prevent these companies from being established and from growing, create better conditions for finding suitable business partners in the EU and most importantly, to improve access to finance, which is one of the main problems start-ups and scale-ups have to face.

Apart from that, vast majority of these companies struggle to get information about European and national regulatory requirements and are afraid of failure because of negative perception of non-success in the society. Therefore, the initiative aims at these bottlenecks and presents several legislative proposals on better access to finance, insolvency law and simpler tax fillings. European business organizations acknowledge the positive elements presented in the initiative, especially its focus on second chance for honest entrepreneurs and improved access to finance. Especially the Pan- European Venture Capital Fund of Funds is a very welcomed element of the proposal that has the potential to leverage the so much needed equity for growth of companies. On the other hand, European business organizations argue that the best initiative European small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) would benefit the most from would be the completion of the single market for goods, services, financing and workforce.

Especially the cross-border e-commerce sector has a huge untapped potential for SMEs which is currently held back by different national standards, consumer laws, product safety and labelling rules, as well as costly VAT regulations. Businesses therefore call on the Commission to make the best effort to remove these barriers while avoiding creating additional ones.