The European Commission (EC) has outlined a range of initiatives designed to create employment at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through the promotion of international trade.

It has published the Small Business, Big World paper, which seeks to address the fact that just 13 per cent of SMEs in the EU currently have foreign partners for trade or investment.

Included in the paper is a plan to create a unified virtual information gateway for such firms that want to conduct business with companies located outside the EU.

In addition it features proposals to make support schemes more consistent and map their availability in order to make the approach more coherent.

"Major non-EU markets with strong growth rates represent significant opportunities for EU small enterprises," observed EC vice-president and commissioner for industry and entrepreneurship Antonio Tajani.

He added helping SMEs to take advantage of this is a "clear priority" for the EC.

Industrial business is slowly improving in the EU27 group of countries, with new orders up 0.4 per cent in August 2011, having dropped by 0.6 per cent the previous month.

Posted by Alex Donnell