Eurofile – Helping small businesses

Fact of the day: The Single Market provides businesses with the opportunity to operate in a huge, relatively wealthy market of 450 million consumers. For multinational corporations, the rules and regulations might be a little annoying to start with but at least they are uniform across the region, and so don’t hinder expansion too much.

There is concern that the multitude of requirements within the internal market might act as a deterrent for new small businesses, or even act as the downfall for existing ones.

Hence, when formulating enterprise policy for the internal market, the EU actively seeks to support the development of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) by providing consultation, recommendations and exchange of best practices.

The EU uses various tools to bring SMEs together, like the European Information Centres set up across the island.

National governments are asked to remove as many obstacles as possible for the creation of SMEs, by providing credit schemes and reducing red tape.

Small shop operators aren’t directly affected by accession as much as various sectors of the economy that have to adjust to new competition and the lifting of protective measures. Small businesses are more affected by the post-accession economic climate of a country.

Regarding shop licences, the EU has no specific rule, leaving each country to implement its own system. The main issue here is non-discrimination of EU citizens who apply for a licence. In other words, you cannot choose to issue a licence based on the nationality of one EU citizen over another.

The EU leaves it up to national governments to deal with the number of shops allowed to operate within each country apart from the retail sector where the EU limits the number of pharmacies and petrol stations.

The EU does not delve into the wages and salaries of EU workers, leaving the level of pay and overtime rates to be determined by the economic climate of each country and individual businesses.