entrepreneurial plan

The programme was set up to strengthen the role of business representative organisations in the central European candidate countries so that they could assist business operators in these countries to adapt to the challenges of accession to the EU, and in particular to the changes arising at company level as a result of the need to adapt to the Community acquis.

– Innovation activities undertaken at regional level under the Fifth Framework Programme, in conjunction with innovatory actions under the structural funds intended to support the networking of players and initiatives at regional level, promote strategies for the creation of a knowledge-based society and facilitate exchanges.

Without overlapping programmes at Member State level, the Programme should be specifically easily accessible for all SMEs, particularly small enterprises and micro-entities.

26. Welcomes the increase (+ EUR 5,7 million) in the overall level of commitment appropriations for the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework programme compared to what was initially foreseen; hopes that this increase will contribute to improving the access of SMEs to this programme and to developing specific programmes and innovative financial mechanisms; recalls, in this context, the key role played by SMEs in boosting the EU economy and supports, in particular, the CIP-EIP programme as an indispensable tool of recovery from the crisis; stresses the need to improve SMEs' access to capital markets and different EU financing opport ...[+++]unities by making funding procedures easier, quicker and less bureaucratic;