The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) study on COVID-19 crisis costs for European SMEs, underlined some of the problems small enterprises are facing to survive across the turbulences of these recent years. SMEs are the essence of the EU economy, representing the 99% of all European businesses and employing the 2/3 of the total jobs within communitarian borders.
SMEs peculiar characteristics make them more sensitive when it comes to crisis namely the covid outbreak and the Ukrainian war. The research refers to the “liability of smallness” that can be summarised as : limited resources, low resilience to overcome negative and new market conditions, lack of knowledge to access the recovery funds from Next Generation EU opportunities, management of the workforce during extreme lockdowns.
In this scenario, without any kind of public structural support, SMEs and start-ups revenues risk to drop down severely, threating lot of job positions. Speaking of sectors, Dr. Markus Jerger, Executive Director of BVMW, highlighted that the two most affected industrial sectors had been tourism and retail. However, between the two, tourism ranks within the first positions on negative economic impact classifications… more
(INSME)
