This special study serves as a background document to the Annual Report on European SMEs 2021/22 and assesses the situation of SMEs in the sustainability transition. This special study is structured as follows: Chapter 1 provides a review of general trends, challenges and opportunities for SMEs....
Since early 2020, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the 23 million EU-27 SMEs, and more generally, SMEs throughout the world, have faced unprecedented economic uncertainty and turmoil. Moreover, through part of 2021, SMEs faced difficulties in hiring new staff to meet an unexpectedly strong rebound ...
2020 was a momentous year for EU SMEs, as well as for EU business and citizens more generally. The Covid-19 crisis brought to an abrupt halt or even reversed the gains made by the EU SME sector over the past decade. Many industries, especially in the SME-intensive services sector, experienced la...
The 2014-2015 SME Annual Report found that in recent years young SMEs created jobs (on a net basis), and the EU needs more young firms to create jobs. There are now no major differences between the EU and the USA as regards new firm creation. Start-ups are key contributors to the innovation and ...
This report provides an overview of the past and forecasted performance of SMEs from 2008 to 2016, and reviews in greater detail the contribution of SMEs to employment creation. SMEs accounted for 71.4% of the increase in employment in 2014 in the non-financial business sector, which includes al...
The present report is part of the 2017/18 SME Performance Review. The year 2018 is a special year, as the Small Business Act (SBA) celebrates its tenth anniversary and also, in the autumn of 2018, it will be ten years since the financial and economic crisis of 2008 hit the world economy. Therefo...
The present report is part of the 2016/17 SME Performance Review. It focuses on the performance of SMEs in the EU-28, and two special chapters review recent developments in self-employment, an important segment of the EU-28 SME population, and discuss start-ups and scale-ups....