The European Commission has organized a series of events with the aim of offering small and medium enterprises sollutions to tackle the crisis and showing entrepreneurs where they can seek advice and benefit from a wide range of easily accessible business support services.

EU Finance Day for SMEs is a series of events in the Member States that the European Commission is organising to inform about the EU financial instruments for SMEs together with the national financial intermediaries that implement these instruments locally. The aim is to raise awareness about different sources of finance and provide a forum for sharing good practices in helping innovative SMEs get easier access to finance.

During their start-up phase, SMEs often face a number of problems directly linked to the lack of resources: lack of human resources, lack of experience, lack of expertise in certain fields, lack of contacts, and of course, lack of financial capacity. Business defaults can have many causes but there is a societal interest in reducing hindrances for start-ups and small enterprises with growth potential. One of the most important issues is to improve the access to suitable finance.

The Commission has developed a number of actions aimed at addressing these problems, and more details can be found on European Portal for SMEs (available in all EU languages).

Several events have already been held in different cities of Europe, such as Helsinki, Sofía, Prague, Dublin, Budapest, Vienna, Oslo, Warsaw, Paris, Brussels or Madrid, but now is the turn for Lisbon. The different activities will take place in Representation of the European Commission in Portugal (Largo Jean Monnet 1-10º). Experts from European Commission, European Investment Fund, IAPMEI or Enterprise Europe Network will explain entrepreneurs their possibilities in the current European Union.