SME

With the below 101 groups from 47 countries, we celebrate World Intellectual Property Day with WIPO and the creativity, inventiveness, and entrepreneurial spirit protected by intellectual property rights around the world.

Addressing and diminishing barriers to the single market in the EU is a much welcome initiative. The initiatives to decrease bureaucracy, to step up efforts to comply with EU law, to evaluate the effects of new regulations on SMEs in impact assessments, and mutual recognition are important steps in promoting growth, free trade, and consumer rights.

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only limited our liberties, but also liberated creativity. Vilnius mayor and LFMI’s ex-president has allowed turning the whole city into a giant outdoor café and let businesses to exploit parks and squares for this purpose.

Slovak large-scale employers want the highest possible wage compensation, looking up to the German or Austrian Kurzarbeit system, which covers up to 85% of wage costs. Journalists and some economists argue that we should borrow as much as we can.

The administrative burden has decreased by one working day or 8 hours compared to last year, shows the 2019 Bureaucracy Index published by the Institute of Economic and Social Studies in cooperation with the Lithuanian Free Market Institute.

The definition of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is an important issue, regarding not only a number of European policies that have been set up to ensure these SMEs benefit from financial support, fee reduction, reduced administrative burden, etc.