Liberals and Democrats have pointed out their support for small and medium sized enterprises' access to structural funds in the EU. During a debate this morning in the Strasbourg plenary several ALDE speakers presented proposals on how to best match the practical needs of SMEs with diligence requirements of those who finance them.

Jürgen CREUTZMANN (FDP, Germany), who is the coordinator of the ongoing ALDE campaign "Boost SMEs" and rapporteur for the EP report on the COSME programme, said: "The access of SMEs to finance in general is a major problem, and the EU study on the effectiveness of structural funds regarding SME points to some important issues: huge bureaucratic obstacles at the application stage, as well as reporting and audit obligations; a lack of distinction between the various types of SMEs (which mostly affects micro-entities); and a lack of harmonization in rules and procedures throughout different EU programmes."

Regarding concrete next steps, ALDE member Fiona HALL (LibDems, UK) said: "The Commission needs to go a step further now and help SMEs by mainstreaming revolving funds, loan guarantees and similar systems so that they are part of all cohesion policy instruments."

"But there is no point in making finance theoretically available to SMEs if there is so much red tape that in practice no small business has time to put in an application. So along with the financial instrument itself we need to see proportionate corporate auditing and reporting standards", she added.