Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) form the backbone of the European enterprise culture and are the engine of development in market economies. To assest their place in the market it will be sufficient to look at the actual statistics: SMEs represent 99.8 per cent of the 16 million enterprises, excluding the nonagricultural market sectors, within the European Union.
Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) form the backbone of the European enterprise culture and are the engine of development in market economies. To assest their place in the market it will be sufficient to look at the actual statistics: SMEs represent 99.8 per cent of the 16 million enterprises, excluding the nonagricultural market sectors, within the European Union. They provide gainful employment to more than 101 million people which constitutes 2/3 of the private sector work force and generate almost 2/3 of the total turnover of all non-agricultural market sectors.
SME’s weaknesses originate principally from the lack of transparent national policy, lack of financial resources, inadequate legislation and supportive and other administrative measures, human resources lacking in management skills, inexperience in handling of information, and underdeveloped innovation skills, including R&D.
R&D activities play a crucial role in the development of SMEs but actually SMEs do not acquire adequate sources and finances to develop R&D activities. In the framework of the EU 6th Framework Programme a lot of projects aiming to increase and encourage the participation of SMEs arised. It’s evident that greater attention should be given to SMEs in the 7th Framework Programme.
In order to reach Barcelona objective of increasing research investment to 3 % of GDP is to be achieved, the R&D expenditure of SMEs must also be increased. The General Secretary of UEAPME ( European Association for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and Craft), Hans-Werner Müller claims ‘ The Commission must pay more than just lip service to these aims in FP7 and tailor programmes to the needs of small businesses’.
Under the Sixth Framework Programme, just 22% of SME proposals considered to be of a ‘very high standard’ received funding, whereas 50% of total projects of a ‘very high standard’ were funded. Commissionner Potocknik has committed to increasing the involvement of SMEs in the next framework programme.
The place of SMEs in Turkish Economy (2000)
Percentage of SMEs:
| in the whole business | %99,8 |
| İn the employment | %76,7 |
| İn the capital investment | %38,0 |
| İn the added value | %26,5 |
| İn the exportation | %10,0 |
| in the Bank credits | %5,0 |
Source: OECD, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises in Turkey; Issues and Policies, Paris, 2004, http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/5/11/31932173.pdf
