Tajani visits Wallonia region to jumpstart SME recovery

European Commission Vice-President Antonio Tajani has travelled to Wallonia in Belgium to help SMEs emerge from the downturn and participate in the next economic growth cycle.

Tajani travelled to La Louvière with Daniel Calleja Crespo, Director-General of DG Enterprise and SME envoy. They were accompanied by 500 representatives of companies from 37 countries. Many of them will participate in more than 800 bilateral meetings with SMEs from Wallonia to form new partnerships and discuss opportunities for collaboration in key sectors, including aeronautics, mechatronics, logistics and creative industries.

An important part of this visit will be the ‘Europe 2020 strategy for growth’ conference, which the Vice-President will open together with the Belgian Prime Minister, Elio Di Rupo, and the Vice-President and Minister of Economy of Wallonia, Jean-Claude Marcourt. Issues discussed will include internationalisation and access to markets of SMEs, key enabling technologies as well as clusters and regional specialisation.

Tajani is expected to use this opportunity to introduce COSME, a new €2.3bn program for SMEs which aims to address the main challenges they are currently facing, such as access to financing, access to foreign markets, improvement of the business environment and support to entrepreneurs. Among other things, the programme will assist EU enterprises deal with the difficulties in obtaining credit by enabling them to receive more than €22bn in secured loans over the next seven years.