{"id":1686,"date":"2020-03-31T08:18:21","date_gmt":"2020-03-31T08:18:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outsourcing-today.ro\/?p=1686"},"modified":"2020-04-25T16:20:31","modified_gmt":"2020-04-25T16:20:31","slug":"amid-the-corona-crisis-digital-smes-call-on-european-council-for-a-50-sme-quota-in-eus-digital-innovation-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outsourcing-today.ro\/?p=1686","title":{"rendered":"Amid the corona crisis, digital SMEs call on European Council for a 50% SME quota in EU\u2019s digital innovation budget"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Digital SMEs and 48 national associations have<a href=\"https:\/\/www.digitalsme.eu\/digital\/uploads\/Open-letter-from-DIGITAL-SME-to-the-European-Council-24.3.2020.pdf\"> written an open letter<\/a> to President Charles Michel and the European Council.\u00a0The core demand: 50% of the new Multiannual Financial Framework\u2019s budget for digital innovation must go to SMEs<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Europe\u2019s small and medium businesses, which make up 99% of all companies, are expected to be hit particularly hard by the COVID-19 crisis.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The situation is serious.<\/strong><span data-contrast=\"auto\"> European DIGITAL SME Alliance and 48\u00a0national associations of digital SMEs have written a letter to the European Council ahead of its summit in late March. In the letter, the SME representatives asked for a strongly elevated consideration for SMEs in the\u00a0<strong>EU budget 2021-2027.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><span data-contrast=\"auto\">Even before COVID-19 threatened Europe\u2019s economic stability, digital SMEs were faced with serious challenges.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><span data-contrast=\"auto\">ICT small and medium businesses have insufficient resources to invest in Research and Development. They also suffer from a severe lack of digitally skilled labour force, for which they also compete with big tech enterprises, who in turn pay only a fraction of the taxes SMEs pay. Despite these challenges, digital SMEs are the drivers of Europe\u2019s digital transformation in all other sectors.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><span data-contrast=\"auto\">The core demand of European SMEs is to receive 50% of the EU budget for digital innovation.<\/span><\/strong><span data-contrast=\"auto\">\u00a0This budget includes programs like Horizon Europe, Digital Europe, the Connecting Europe Facility and other funding instruments. Currently, SMEs receive around 20%, whereas large enterprises, universities and research organisations share the remaining 80%.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"none\">Upon sending the letter to President Michel, DIGITAL SME President Dr Oliver Gr\u00fcn remarked, \u201cSMEs are the force that will jumpstart Europe\u2019s economy after the Coronavirus crisis.\u00a0<strong>As 99% of all enterprises, SMEs should receive at least 50% of the allocated EU funds for digital innovation.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Read the full letter <a href=\"https:\/\/www.digitalsme.eu\/digital\/uploads\/Open-letter-from-DIGITAL-SME-to-the-European-Council-24.3.2020.pdf\">here<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Digital SMEs and 48 national associations have written an open letter to President Charles Michel and the European Council.\u00a0The core demand: 50% of the new Multiannual Financial Framework\u2019s budget for digital innovation must go to SMEs Europe\u2019s small and medium [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1689,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[277],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outsourcing-today.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outsourcing-today.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outsourcing-today.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outsourcing-today.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outsourcing-today.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1686"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/outsourcing-today.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1690,"href":"https:\/\/outsourcing-today.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions\/1690"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outsourcing-today.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outsourcing-today.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outsourcing-today.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outsourcing-today.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}