The Commission announces new and updated initiatives to assist SMEs to go international

The Commission's Vice President Antonio Tajani announced new European Commission's projects to support clusters of SMEs in the sectors of clean technologies, renewable energy, bio-technology, and sports goods so SMEs can take full advantage of the strong growth in these sectors in Asia, Latin America, North America and Russia.

The European Commission announced on the occasion of the third meeting of SME envoys in Brussels, new projects to support clusters of SMEs in order to assists SMEs to go international. European Commission Vice President Antonio Tajani, responsible for Industry and Entrepreneurship, stressed that to promote growth and job creation in Europe, it is needed to remove obstacles for European small businesses to access growth markets abroad. In addition, according to the Commission, the new public procurement initiative launched on 21 of March will increase the incentives for the EU's trading partners to open up their public procurement markets to EU bidders, including SMEs.

The new initiatives to assist SMEs to go abroad include as goal, to improve performance of clusters. Thus, a new Commission pilot action aims to upgrade the profile of 25 experts working in clusters, so that they can act as 'multipliers' and train many other cluster managers to enable them to better support SMEs who want to trade globally. In addition, four new projects (new material and processes on clean technologies, renewables and sustainable energy, biotechnology crossing borders, and sport goods and services) will help SME members of clusters to find partners for international cooperation with a view to developing transnational cluster cooperation beyond Europe.

On the other hand, the EU's China Intellectual Property Rights SME Helpdesk has already broadened its range of interactive services and each year enables thousands of EU SMEs to secure and defend their intellectual property in this key market. Furthermore, more than 600 business support centres from the Enterprise Europe Network help SMEs to become successful in Europe and beyond. The Commission also stresses that organisers can register events to promote entrepreneurship during the European SME week in October 2012.