COSME: helping small businesses grow

Today, the COSME (Competitiveness of Enterprises and SMEs) Programme, the first support programme exclusively dedicated to helping small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), agreed between a negotiating team from the European Parliament and the Council, was adopted by the Parliament’s Industry, Research and Energy Committee.

"This programme will give an important injection to the small and medium-sized enterprises in Europe thereby helping them to grow and create jobs", said Bendt Bendtsen MEP, EPP Group negotiator on the dossier.

“It has been a priority for the EPP Group to alleviate the financing constraints that prevent many SMEs investing in growth and jobs. This effort paid off in the negotiations”, underlined Bendtsen.

“We do, of course, deplore the limited magnitude of the financial envelope for COSME. More importantly, we succeeded in reserving at least 60% of the COSME funds to help enterprises overcome the financial constraints."

The COSME Programme implies that the European Union will now dedicate €2.03 billion from 2014 to 2020 to help entrepreneurs and SMEs across Europe to fund start-ups, expansions and acquisitions. The programme aims to reach about 300,000 enterprises and along with the Horizon research programme, it will mark a significant contribution to growth.

The importance of supporting SMEs cannot be understated as 80 out of 100 jobs are created by SMEs.

Apart from the 60% of the programme which goes to the financial instruments, loans, guarantees and venture capital, 21.5% is earmarked for promoting market access for SMEs and 11% goes towards improving the framework conditions for SMEs, among other things, helping reduce unnecessary administrative burdens and reducing red tape as a result of EU legislation.

The result of the negotiations will be voted in the plenary session from 21-24 October in Strasbourg.