The European Union’s Small Business Act: A Different Approach

The Congressional Research Service, a department of the Library of Congress, conducts research and analysis for Congress on a broad range of national and international policy issues. Some of the CRS work is carried out specifically for individual members of Congress or their staff and is confidential. However, there is also much CRS compiled material which is considered public but is not formally published on the CRS website.

For that reason a number of other organisations try to keep track of these publications and make them publicly available via their own websites. Currently, ESO uses the following websites to track these reports and allow access to them in ESO:

EveryCRSReport.com
Federation of American Scientists (FAS)

In some cases hyperlinks allows you to access all versions of a report, including the latest. Note that many reports are periodically updated.The Small Business Act for Europe, or SBA, was adopted in June 2008 and aims to improve the overall approach to entrepreneurship and promote the growth of Small and Medium-sized Entreprises, or SME, by helping them tackle the remaining problems which hamper their development. This report opens with a discussion of the European Commission’s decision to use a size standard that is very different than the size standard used in the United States. It then examines the SBA’s various provisions and the major programs the European Commission has implemented to achieve the act’s objectives. Next, it compares and contrasts the European and American approaches to assisting SMEs. This report provides information and analysis useful to Congress as it crafts small business policy for the United States.

• Primary Source

EveryCRSReport.com https://www.everycrsreport.com/

FAS: Congressional Research Service [CRS] Reports https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/index.html

ESO: Background Information: 'Small Business Act' for Europe http://www.europeansources.info/record/small-business-act-for-europe/

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