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. The last event of the year took place in Lisbon in December. Now, The Hague, in Netherlands, is hosting tomorrow the last of these events.

Since March 2008, the European Commission has been organizing 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. The Commission has developed a number of actions aimed at addressing these problems, and more details can be found on European Portal for SMEs

For these event, the European Commission is inviting speakers from:

• European Investment Fund (EIF)
• Enterprise Europe Network
• European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (EVCA)
• European Business Angels Network (EBAN)
• European Association of Mutual Guarantee Societies (AECM)
• National and regional financial intermediaries
• Organisations representing SMEs.

The different activities will take place in Crowne Plaza Hotel (Den Haag-Promenade Van Stolkweg 1) on February 18 from 9 am.