Quote of the Week: Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in
advancing toward what will be - Kahlil Gibran
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ESBA WEEKLY of Friday 02 November 2001 - VOL 3 - N° 44
Headlines of WEEK 44:
- HEALTH & SAFETY: EP amends mechanical vibrations directive
- FINANCE: European Parliament rejects idea of Tobin tax
- EMPLOYMENT: EP support for 2002 employment guidelines
- SOCIAL: EP amends workers consultation directive
- FINANCE: Outcomes of the SME Finance conference
- R&D: Facilitating SME participation in European research
- SMEs: ESBA's opinion on the review of the SME definition
- UPCOMING EVENTS
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EU / HEALTH & SAFETY
Strasbourg 23/10/2001: EP amends mechanical vibrations directive
The European Parliament plenary amended in its second reading the Council'
s common position on the directive on the Safety and Health at work,
regarding the exposure of workers to the risks arising from mechanical
vibrations (whole body and hand-arm). The directive obliges concerned
employers to determine and assess the vibration risks to which its workers
are exposed, undertake action to reduce and avoid exposure and provide
worker information and training. The directive establishes maximum values
which are considered as a high health risk and sets action values which
are considered as a potential health risk for the exposure to hand-arm
vibrations and whole body vibration. The European Parliament wants
stricter daily exposure limits and lower maximum exposure levels than the
Council, bringing them in line with international standards (based on the
precautionary principle).
The European Parliament was convinced that a five-year transition period
would be sufficient for companies in the mining, building, manufacturing
and transport industries to replace their tools and machinery, as opposed
to the Council proposal of a transition period of 6 years (taking into
account technical difficulties in implementing the proposal by SMEs),
while within the agricultural and forestry sector a possible further
extension of two years was permitted (Council proposed three).
It is a minimum standard directive, allowing Member States to set stricter
rules. The report is now going into conciliation procedure.
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EU / FINANCE
Strasbourg 23/10/2001: European Parliament rejects idea of Tobin tax
The European Parliament plenary adopted a resolution setting out ways of
improving the workings of the international monetary system and welcomed
the Council's decision to call on the Commission to carry out before 2002
a study on globalisation (see ESBA Weekly - Vol 3 - N 39), while rejecting
the proposed amendment expressing support for the Commission to study the
conditions for the introduction of a Tobin style tax. Still, the EC is
expected to come up with the study, including an economic analysis of the
Tobin tax.
For the rest, the EP favoured a reform of the IMF and supported more
involvement of the private sector in crisis management as well as freezing
debt repayments for poor countries hit by a solvency crisis. With regards
to speculation, the EP supports an approach, allowing emerging economies
to protect themselves by introducing complementary measures to accompany
the domestic liberalisation of capital.
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EU / EMPLOYMENT
Strasbourg 23/10/2001: EP support for 2002 employment guidelines
The European Parliament plenary adopted a resolution welcoming the 2002
employment guidelines and the emphasis to increase the EU's employment
rate through further structural reforms of the labour market, and
increasing investment in training. In this respect, the European
Parliament wants employees to be given the legal right to vocational
further training by Member States, to be realised in co-operation with the
social partners, which are requested to negotiate a European framework
agreement.
The Parliament also supported easier access to funding for SME's and
warned that the Basle II convention should not increase costs of credit
terms for SME's. Furthermore, it supported measures to encourage women's
participation in the labour market, by reducing burdens on start-up
businesses, simplifying formal procedures required and establishing funds
to stimulate new businesses.
As the EC reports and analysis (see ESBA Weekly - Vol 3 - N 37) show
concretely that progress in the entrepreneurship pillar is rather badly
reported and further efforts by Member States are still needed (e.g. on
issues such as employment rates in SMEs, administrative burdens,
simplifying legislation), and as no recommendations to the Member States
have been done in this field, ESBA regrets the fact that the European
Parliament did not address the issue at all and limited itself to women's
participation only when addressing these issues.
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EU / EMPLOYMENT
Strasbourg 23/10/2001: EP amends workers consultation directive
In its second reading, the European Parliament slightly amended and
strengthened the Council's common position on the proposed directive
establishing a general framework for improving information and
consultation rights of employees in the EU. The proposed legislation would
oblige all companies employing 50 or more employees (medium-sized and
large-sized companies) in one Member State to put into place a framework,
providing details on the company's financial situation and strategic
plans, to inform and consult their workers when planning a major company
restructuring or the closure of an establishment. Although most Member
States have already national law in place dealing with the matter, the
proposal attempts to create as soon as possible common European rules on
the matter in the form of minimum requirements (see also ESBA Weekly - Vol
3 - N 27), to take into account current economic realities of cross-border
company activities.
In this respect, the European Parliament did not want to provide extended
transition periods to the UK and Ireland for their medium-sized companies
(who do not have legal workers information and consultation systems in
place yet), like the Council had proposed. Furthermore, the European
Parliament now wants to give workers the chance to postpone decisions with
significant adverse effects on employees, and also broadened the number of
issues on which workers must be consulted.
The plenary rejected the following main employment committee's proposed
amendments:
- for Member States to impose specific and strict sanctions in case of
serious violation by the employer of its obligation in the field of worker
information and consultation (the principle of sanctions are maintained in
the report, but the way sanctions should are established is now left up to
Member States);
- the amendment to bring down the general transition period down from
three to two years (Council suggested three years); as well as
The report is now going into conciliation procedure and a compromise is
still looked for in 2001, although negotiations could easily be stretched
into 2002 due to the controversial nature of the issue. The EC already
indicated that only the issue of sanctions was acceptable to them.
It has to be acknowledged that SMEs often have already effective informal
workers information systems in place and that they need a certain level of
flexibility when managing change. The proposed legislation should
therefore not imply more administrative burdens and bureaucracy for SMEs,
especially realising that the directive was initially based for a great
deal on redundancies in recent years announced by some MAJOR European
companies, NOT much smaller companies.
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EU / FINANCE
Louvain-la-Neuve 25/10/2001: Outcomes of the SME Finance conference
The conference on financing SMEs, organised on 24 and 25 October 2001 led
to some of the following outcomes:
- a need to review the Basel Convention on credit, more specifically a
call for impact assessments of SME funding (supported by German Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder);
- a more business-friendly form of taxation should be promoted for SMEs,
via tax incentives for profit reservation and tax relief to encourage
private individuals to invest in the business sector;
- more in-depth benchmarking for the funding of business angels network;
- the EIB and the EIF should be more focused on contract failures,
particularly in the business start-up phase and in the case of small
amounts;
- in relation to guarantee systems, a partnership needs to be developed
further between the public and private sectors, based on shared
risk-taking, and there is a need for extended risk capital guarantees on
both formal and informal financial markets;
- a necessity to develop a European code of conduct on bank-company
relationships; and
- stimulating the entrepreneurial climate by making it easier to swap
information on the capital supply/demand situation, facilitating access to
intellectual property for SMEs, and to make government funding
administrative procedures less complicated.
In relation to the SME financing conference, an informal ministerial
conference took place on October 26, on scaling down and refocusing state
aid. As agreed upon in Stockholm this year, Member States have committed
themselves by 2003 to show declining state aid as a percentage of GNP. The
meeting served as to prepare the issue for the next Industry Council on
December 5. During the meeting, it was noted that the events of 11
September and the current economical context cannot justify massive use of
state aids. The ministers confirmed the necessity to be restrictive in
awarding specific and sectoral public aid; preference should be given to
horizontal objectives (R&D support, innovation, SMEs, start-ups), aid
responding to market inefficiencies, the development of innovative
instruments which improve the competitiveness and improve the business
environment (risk capital, guarantees, fiscal measures) and the
identification of good practices.
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EU / SINGLE MARKET
Brussels 26/10/2001: European Banks propose alternative to Regulation
The European Banking Federation has come up with an alternative for the
proposed regulation to harmonise cross-border payments at the end of this
year (to take effect partially as from 1 January 2002 and fully on 1
January 2003), by suggesting a voluntary code to gradually reduce the
difference in cost between domestic and cross-border payments to zero by
the year 2006 (mid 2002: 12 euro for transfers and 3 euro for cash
withdrawals, 2004: 8/2, 2005: 4/1, and 2006: 0/0). According to EC sources
the proposal is too little, too late. So far, as reported in the ESBA
Weekly of last week (Vol 3 - N 43), both the European Parliament and
Council have lend full support for the proposed regulation.
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EU / R&D
Brussels 30/10/2001: Facilitating SME participation in European research
CORDIS, the European Commission's Research and Development Information
Service, has redesigned its service web site to help SMEs participate in
and benefit from European research funding. The new web site offers
clearer and concise information, and step-by step guidance and advice on
all specific measures for SMEs, including participation rules, contractual
issues, partner search, training opportunities, support contact points and
previous research projects.
More info: http://sme.cordis.lu/home/index.cfm
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EU / SMEs
Brussels 02/11/2001: ESBA opinion on the review of the SME definition
DG Enterprise of the European Commission is currently consulting European
organisations on a revised proposal for the definition of SMEs. Having
participated in the pre-consultation meeting that took place on Tuesday 9
October 2001, ESBA is in the process to finalise its position paper to
contribute to the debate (deadline 9 November). Here are some of the
comments that can already be made in our bulletin of this week.
- The exercise of reviewing the SME definition of 1996 partially suffers
from a lack of analysing the way it has impact on enterprise policy in
Europe so far. The European Commission did not carry out any specific
surveys before drafting this new proposal and several important data may
have influenced the way to review the definition. For instance, it could
have been useful to measure the impact of reducing the ceiling for SMEs
from 250 persons to 150 or 100 persons. Under current circumstances, it is
difficult to have a proper debate on such an issue.
- Nonetheless, the draft text indicates a certain effort to take into
account some important issues, notably the mis-use of the definition by
non-SMEs to get access to specific SMEs initiatives.
- The draft text sometimes appeared a bit too complex for most of the
organisations which participated in the pre-consultation stage.
- Its overall success will depend over its use at EU level and in the
Member States.
In its position paper, ESBA will notably request a statistical recognition
of the single occupant businesses throughout Europe as it appears that
such businesses represent more than 50 % of all businesses in Europe. ESBA
will also request a more ambitious use of the SME definition for the
subcategories of micro-enterprises and small businesses in enterprises
policies at EU level and in the Member States.
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UPCOMING EVENTS
Faro (P) 4-6/11/2001: Conference launching the BENE network; Theme: Best
practice in entrepreneurship training and education.
Info: http://www.bene-europe.org
Brussels (B) 05/11/2001: The Security of European Energy Supply,
consequences for SMEs; Theme: Energy, SMEs.
Info: http://www.sme-union.org/activities/sme5november.htm
Brussels (B) 07/11/2001: Meeting between business organisations and the
EC, DG Enterprise; Theme: 2001 Best Procedure Report and revised proposal
for SME definition.
Ghent (B) 13-14/11/2001: Values at work - Prospects for the social economy
within the framework of sustainable development; Theme: Employment,
Sustainable Development. Info: http://www.socialeconomy.be/
Brussels (B) 14-15/11/2001: Business Centres: actors for economic
development and urban renewal, including the EU Award for Spirit of
Enterprise & the launch of the European Fund for Start-ups; Theme:
Incubators, Employment, Start-ups,. Info:
http://www.urban-entreprise2001.be
& http://www.jee.org
Liege (B) 19/11/2001: The role of SMEs in the 6th R&D framework programme;
Theme: SMEs, Research, Innovation. Info (copy/paste full link):
http://www.eu2001.be/VE_Adv_Cal/detail.asp?cat_code=C&item_id=704&curr_pag
e=9&sess=86371191&reference=11%2D01%2E04%2D01&lang=en&
Brussels (B) 22-23/11/2001: Closing conference European Week 2001 -
Prevention of work-related accidents: a different strategy in a changing
world of work; Theme: SMEs, Health and Safety. Info:
http://osha.eu.int/ew2001/programme.stm
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The ESBA Weekly is now sent to an increasing amount of persons with a
direct interest in SMEs.
This bulletin is made in co-operation with LOGOS
(http://www.logos-eu.com).
