Occorre promuovere le attività internazionali delle PMI.
Le PMI Europee sono ancora troppo legate ai mercati interni. Lo rivela un recente studio pubblicato dalla DG enterprise.
There is a direct link between internationalisation and increased SMEs performance. International activities reinforce growth, enhance competitiveness and support the long term sustainability of companies. Yet European SMEs still depend largely on their domestic markets despite the opportunities brought by the enlarged single market and by globalisation at large,
In 2009 the Commission launched a study to map the level of internationalisation of European SMEs, identify which are the main barriers and advantages of internationalisation and propose policy recommendations. The study analysed all activities that put SMEs into a meaningful business relationship with a foreign partner: exports, imports, foreign direct investment, international subcontracting and international technical co-operation. The data and conclusions are based on a survey of 9,480 SMEs in 33 European countries. The survey was carried out during spring 2009.
The most relevant finding was that 25% of EU 27 SMEs export or have exported at some point during the last 3 years. However, international activities are mostly geared towards other countries inside the internal market and only about 13% of EU SMEs are active in markets outside the EU.
In addition to the numbers presenting the state of internationalisation, the study presents fact based evidence of the need to support greater internationalisation which have political consequences:
- International SMEs create more jobs: Internationally active SMEs report an employment growth of 7% versus only 1% for SMEs without any international activities.
- International SMEs are more innovative: 26% of internationally active SMEs introduced products or services that were new for their sector in their country; for other SMEs this is only 8%.
- Public support goes largely un-noticed: Only 16% of SMEs are aware of public support programmes for internationalisation and only a small number of SMEs use public support.
- European SMEs are more internationally active than US and Japanese SMEs. Overall, European firms are more active than their counterparts in Japan or the US. Even if only extra EU exports are considered they still perform better.
- Most often SMEs start international activities by importing. SMEs that both import and export started with import twice as often (39%) than with exports (18%).
Lo studio puo’ essere scaricato al seguente indirizzo:
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/market-access/internationalisation/index_en.htm
