Informacije o mnenju 

THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS



- recognises the achievements to-date of activities implemented through the SBA but strongly recommends that in order for the Commission and Member States in particular, to deliver more substantially on its objectives, the SBA needs to become more politically binding to ensure greater and more fully compliant levels of implementation and to overcome the current barriers for full adoption of the SBA;

- considers that the SBA demands political leadership and believes that the Europe 2020 Strategy needs to include a more explicit recognition of the SBA to provide a more stable governance structure for this policy by adopting an appropriate roadmap highlighting key milestones to be achieved by all Member States that should be included in National Reform Programmes;

- foresees greater opportunities for regional and local authorities to contribute to the aims of the SBA and urges a more explicit recognition of the local and regional dimension to encourage both a bottom-up and top-down approach as well as giving the SBA greater visibility across the EU. Concludes that a greater level of communication and prioritisation of the Act is required across the EU at national, regional and local levels;

- highlights that the greatest challenge for SMEs is access to finance and this requires concerted action in the next stages of the SBA; underlines also the importance of efforts towards facilitating SMEs access to markets as well as a substantial reduction in administrative burdens;

- greatly regrets that the commitment to embed the SBA in both the Lisbon Strategy and subsequently the Europe 2020 Strategy has not occurred, in doing so the opportunity to utilise the National Reform Programmes as a key implementing tool of the SBA has been so far missed. Therefore, once again urgently calls for the immediate embedding of the principles and objectives of the SBA in the Europe 2020 Strategy and NRP implementation.