Review enlargement special: SMEs

The study argues that 10 years of transition have not led to the birth of an enterprise culture in the candidate countries, yet the maturity of those economies, together with their ability to withstand the shock of EU membership, will henceforth be dependent on the development of their SMEs. The study analyses the situation and the challenges to be met.

In Eastern Europe, the fall of the Berlin Wall brought about an explosion in the numbers of SMEs, the lynchpin of these new economies and therefore also of the accession negotiations. By June 2001, all the candidate countries had closed the chapter on SMEs and had thus, to a greater or lesser extent, accepted the European definition of SMEs. According to UN figures, SMEs now provide work for 35% of the active population in Slovenia; in Hungary, they number 800,000, employ 2.5 million people and are responsible for a third of the country's exports.

The setting up of SMEs in the candidate countries constitutes an important vector for know-how, although these SMEs are sometimes fragile because of their size. In such cases, the support of a large international group enables them to benefit from the logistics that they would otherwise lack. Creators of jobs and the motive force behind new market economies, the development of SMEs in central and eastern Europe will, in years to come, make it possible to lay the foundations of a solid economic framework in this region, even within the context of a Europe stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals.