- Funding Programme
- Year
- 2024
Assessing policies for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the Czech Republic
The European Commission has supported small and medium enterprises (SME) policy development in the Czech Republic conducted through a mid-term evaluation of the national SME Strategy, 2021-2027. The project was delivered in collaboration with the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade (MIT), which was also the main beneficiary of the intervention.
Context
The project has assessed existing SME policies in the Czech Republic, many of which are funded through EU resources such as the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the European Regional Development Fund and the European Social Fund. Furthermore, the report has assessed the alignment of SME policies in the Czech Republic with EU strategies across each of the seven policy areas covered in the Strategy document: business environment, access to finance, access to market, skills, digitalisation, R&D and innovation, and the green economy. The overall coherence of the national SME Strategy with the EU SME strategy for a Sustainable and Digital Europe was also assessed.
Support delivered
The project was funded by SG REFORM and done in close consultation with the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic. The project also involved the participation of many other national ministries and stakeholders (e.g., the Ministry of Finance, CzechInvest, CzechTrade, etc.) in official meetings which were held in Prague to better understand the context and outcomes of Czech SME policies. The main support delivered took the form of an in-depth assessment of SME policies in the Czech Republic across the seven different policy areas of the Strategy (business environment, access to finance, access to market, skills, digitalisation, R&D and innovation, and the green economy), as well as an Action Plan consisting of 26 specific policy actions which the Czech government could consider to enhance the performance of domestic SMEs at national level.
Results achieved
The project has provided an in-depth assessment of the implementation of the SME Strategy of Czechia, including policy recommendations and a detailed Action Plan. The main beneficiary (i.e. the MIT) has now an updated assessment of SME policies in the Czech Republic, inclusive of policy recommendations, which can be used to steer policy reforms in the remaining implementation period of the Strategy (2025-2027) and beyond. This is especially important since the current Strategy was mostly designed even before the Covid-19 crisis, let alone the 2022 energy crisis, which means the macroeconomic situation facing SMEs has considerably changed since the original preparation of the Strategy document. The expected impact on the ground is the design and implementation of better policies improving the performance of SMEs in terms of access to finance, innovation, and digitalisation, among others, which should ultimately result in increased productivity performance and a stronger contribution of domestic SMEs to economic growth
More about the project
You can read the documents related to the project here: