The European Commission presented its 2010 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) report  including surveys on each EU Member State  – on the occasion of the SME Week taking place throughout Europe from 3-9 October.
The report confirms that SMEs remain the EU’s economic backbone. In 2010, there were almost 20.8 million SMEs in the EU non-financial business economy of which 19.2 million were micro-firms with less than 10 employees.

Altogether SMEs provided more than two-thirds (87.5 million) of all employment opportunities in the private sector in the EU and 58.4% of the total gross value-added, compared to the 43 000 large businesses representing only the 0.2% of the EU enterprises.

Praxis contributed to the study on the Compilation of SME policy measures and assessment of the the Small Business Act  implementation within the SME performance Review 2010. The Small Business Act is the flagship policy initiative on the EU level and comprising a host of concrete measures, organised around 10 different principles, measures geared towards improving the business conditions for SMEs.