Liikanen urges stakeholders to contribute to entrepreneurship debate
The Commissioner for Enterprise and the Information Society, Erkki Liikanen, has urged the business community to participate in the debate surrounding the Commission's Green Paper on entrepreneurship. Mr Liikanen highlighted the importance of the Green Paper debate to future policy decisions during his speech to the Ministerial conference on small business and entrepreneurship in Thessaloniki on 14 February. 'To get our policies right, we need to listen to the people most affected,' said the Commissioner. 'This is why we are launching a wide debate around the Green Paper. So that we can listen to all the interested parties.' Mr Liikanen outlined the role of the Green Paper in the wider context of the Commission's competitiveness policy. He said that while initiatives such the Charter for small businesses were top down methods for assessing recent progress, the entrepreneurship Green Paper has a bottom up approach focussed on future policy identification. The Commissioner stressed that while the Charter for small businesses had produced achievements in some areas and in some Member States, such achievements need to be fully exploited across the EU. He gave examples of administrative red tape being cut in six Member States, but added that: '[...] still businesses complain that red tape is one of their major problems. To effectively cut red tape we need to listen to businesses more.' Another reason for maximising the impact of the Green Paper consultation, according to the Commissioner, was the need for constant and ongoing improvement. 'While the Charter is helping us move forward, our competitors are moving too. We have to keep our ambition keen. We have to constantly sharpen our ambition and double our efforts,' he said. And Mr Liikanen gave delegates at the conference a taste of what the Commission would be doing to improve EU competitiveness, announcing that it is to produce a communication on innovation policy in the near future.