Small firms show little desire for bigger EU

Date: 14/10/1999

By Simon Coss

THE EU's small business community is at best indifferent and at worst openly hostile to the idea of new countries joining the Union, a new survey has revealed.

The study was commissioned by the European Commission's enterprise department and will make uncomfortable reading for governments bidding for EU membership. Only three of the applicant countries received approval ratings of 50% or more in the survey of 1,500 managers of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).

Estonia came bottom, with just 24% of those questioned in favour of allowing the Baltic state to become an EU member. Bulgaria received a 28% approval rating, Romania 29%, Slovenia 30% and Slovakia 32%. Cyprus and Malta also failed to win a majority of positive answers, with approval ratings of 35% and 36% respectively.

Even those applicants whose membership bids did win majority support only scraped in. The Czech Republic had a score of exactly 50%; Poland managed 55% and Hungary 56%.

The Commission was quick to play down the survey's significance, saying that it showed that small businesses did not know much about the applicants. "We have noticed that SMEs often tend to leave things to the last minute and do not act until their interests are directly affected. This was the case with the euro, it is the case with the millennium bug and it appears to be the case with EU enlargement," insisted an expert working for the Commission-backed Euro Info Centre (EIC) network.