The workshop, which essentially gathered member states representatives, labour organisations representatives and enterprises specialised in advising on launching start-ups through Europe, in preparation for the European Council that will take place next spring.
The representatives of 9 different European countries have explained the administrative difficulties faced by the new SME's and the proposed solutions in order to answer to the Commission's wish: before end of 2007, reduce the costs and shorten to one week the SME's creation-period.
However, after that the Commission representatives strongly underlined the administrative procedures, many participants has criticised the Commission for its narrow approach, which only sorted out a small part of the problems; indeed, what the use of simplifying procedures if they do not take into account the other launching conditions in order to create a SME, as the registration to a professional organisation, and whether these new enterprises are able to work or not because of a too small financing at the start.
Bruno Roelants echoed these comments, underlining also that the presentation of the questionnaire results by the Commission did not take into account other legal status such as the traditional private limited company, although several of our member organisations answered the questionnaire. He mentioned the initial Commission presentation, which indicated that this work was implemented on the conventional private limited company as “benchmarking”, saying that it could not exclude other legal status, each of them having its specific advantages as well as the cooperative one.
This event is a new example of the importance of our network to keep going on working without respite in order to show our presence by any possible means (complete questionnaires, participate to seminars, etc.)
