Selected candidate countries to participate in Community SME programme
The Czech Republic, Latvia, Malta, Poland, Romania and Slovakia have been authorised by the European Commission to take part in the Community's multiannual programme for entrepreneurship and enterprise. The programme, which is particularly angled at SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises), helps to promote areas such as innovation, research and development, support structures for SMEs and simplification of regulatory and bureaucratic procedures. The condition of the countries' inclusion in the programme is that they pay their own participation costs, but the Commission has pointed out that these costs could be drawn in part from their national PHARE programme allocations.