COPIE Story of the Month

The COPIE Policy Forum on "Entrepreneurship for All: Promoting inclusive growth in Europe through the European Structural Funds" took place on April 16-17, 2012 in Berlin. With a total number of 70 delegates from twelve EU countries and thirteen different European regions, this interactive and lively event proved to be an excellent forum for discussing the results of COPIE’s work.

Effective business support services are at the heart of regional entrepreneurship programmes. Member States and regions in Europe have established and financed a large number of support schemes for different sectors and for different stages in the entrepreneur’s itinerary.
These are mostly delivered by economic development agencies, specialised support organisations, chambers of commerce and craft, business associations, independent advisors or local authorities.

99% of all businesses in Europe are small to medium-sized; in fact, 92% are micro-businesses with less than 10 employees. According to the European Employment Observatory Review 2010, the total number of self-employed people in the European Union is 32.5 million, accounting for about 15% of total employment. The report acknowledges that ‘Self-employment is an important driver of entrepreneurship and job creation and thus contributes to the European Union’s goals of more growth and better jobs’. Figures from an EU-commissioned Study on the SME’s impact on the EU labour market published in January 2012 further confirm this.

This October was a crucial month for future policy action on microfinance in Europe: as part of the draft legislative package for the EU Cohesion Policy 2014-2020, the EU Commission has announced a new Programme for Social Change and Innovation which refers to microfinance and combines the three previous initiatives of Progress, EURES and the European Progress Microfinance Facility (EPMF). At the same time, the Commission published the proposals for the new ESF and ERDF regulations. Details of the current status of the EPMF are now available in the 2010 Implementation report; and finally, DG Enterprise issued a new European Code of Good Conduct for Microfinance Provision.

COPIE’s 3rd COPIE Access to Finance peer review meeting in Berlin last month, and the partners’ work on a joint Manual on Access to Finance for ESF Managing Authorities are thus extremely timely.

‘Joint action planning’ is one of the five designated thematic areas of collaboration within the COPIE partnership. Over a period of one year, delegates from Asturias, the Czech Republic, Flanders, Germany and Wallonia met four times to share experience in governing regional entrepreneurship systems. More specifically, discussions revolved around the four themes of ‘Developing a common vision’; ‘Agreeing an evaluation strategy’; ‘Building an integrated campaign’; and ‘Planning for a legacy’. Partners shared their individual regional policies and practices, and the group jointly worked towards identifying strengths and weaknesses as well as key criteria for success.

The COPIE Diagnosis Tool for inclusive entrepreneurship is a standardised instrument developed by COPIE to assess local or regional business support infrastructures across Europe. Based on recent experience from its application, the COPIE Diagnosis Tool is currently in the process of being updated, and a manual on how to implement this instrument will be posted on this website shortly.