Author Description

For over 20 years promoting entrepreneurship and encouraging new enterprises has been one of the priorities of the European Union and its Member States and a variety of measures have been put in place to support would-be entrepreneurs and newly established businesses. As well as creating the right regulatory and administrative environment for new businesses, providing appropriate support has always been part of the picture. The European Charter for Small Enterprises, adopted in June 2000, called for the 'promotion of top-class small business support' and the following year the Commission published a Working Paper on 'Creating Top-Class Business Support Services' (EC 2001). With the Small Business Act of 2008 (EC 2008) and its Revision in 2011 (EC 2011), action was taken in a range of areas at both EU and national level - from promoting awareness of entrepreneurship to access to finance and mentoring for women and young people. The Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan in 2013 (EC 2013a) provided a new framework, emphasising entrepreneurial education and training to support growth and business creation and supporting new enterprises. The time has now come to take stock of all these developments and establish an overview of the current state of business support provision for entrepreneurs and new businesses, while at the same time taking into account the significant drivers that are bringing change to the support environment. The review of the European SME-Action Programme by the SME Envoys Network in 2017, for instance, points to an increased emphasis on the theme of SME growth and scaling-up and the significance of effective entrepreneurial ecosystems for these processes. Similarly, the Commission's Start-up and Scale-up Initiative (EC 2016 b) emphasises the significance of high-growth firms for innovation, competitiveness and employment and the importance of improving the ecosystem for start-ups and scale-ups. These changes present a challenge for the agencies and prof