EU Regional Cooperation for SMEs access to Public Procurement
EU regions have developed different policies to provide support to SMEs when participating in projects funded by multilateral donors. However, performance of SMEs is different among regions as confirmed by different studies (DG Enterprise, DG Internal Market) on SMEs access to EU public procurement. Actually this field remains slightly spread among EU SMEs. On the other side, mention is to be made to two initiatives to increase the participation of SMEs in EU tenders: the Small Business Act and a directive proposal. Moreover, since January '06 any company from a non - EU member state (based on specific EU bilateral agreements) is allowed to participate in EU public procurement, thus increasing competition. Therefore and due to all the before mentioned circumstantces, there is a need to better prepare EU SMEs. The overall objective is to increase the competitiveness of EU regions - SMEs in the field of participation in EU tendering systems (incl Structural Funds) (innovative field).
To this end, a medium level cooperation through a balanced partnership of 11 gathering regions from NMS (Bulg, Cz R, Hung, Pol, Rom) and EU15 (Dk, Fr, It, Pt, Sp) is proposed. This approach will also help NMS regions to learn about past mistakes by EU15 states in managing EU Structural Funds. Project activities have been jointly designed and set in a plan involving an active cooperation among all partners aimed at improving capacities and knowledge, thus narrowing the existing gap among strategies actually implemented by them. Outlined activities are: Communication plan, interregional benchmarking research, Joint Working Plan, Joint conferences, Joint thematic seminars, Study visits, Site visits, Staff exchanges, Joint interregional training sessions, Joint thematic surveys, Best practices guides and pilot actions. The environment sector will be given a specific focus. Project activities and results will be spread through different means following publicity requirements.
As a result, the project will contribute to increase the competitiveness of EU SMEs and to achieve the EU strategies for growth, jobs and sustainable development. Key results are: regional policies improved based on internationalisation of SMEs, regional mechanisms innovated to promote efficiently and effectively the participation of SMEs in public procurement, regional stakeholders with capacities and know-how improved to support SMEs raising their success in public procurements, networking increased among less experienced and more experienced regions. Finally, the main project outputs are: 3 Joint conferences, 1 Communication Plan, 33 Regional Dissemination events, 1 Website and 1 Intranet, 5 newsletters, 1 joint brochure, 7 Press releases, 1 Working Plan, 1 Interregional Benchmarking Research, 3 guides created, 6 Joint Thematic Seminars, 3 Study Visits, 3 Site Visits, 3 Staff Exchange, 3 Joint region training sessions, 3 Joint thematic surveys, 3 pilot actions.