The European Commission will announce next week a regulation to combat late payments, in such a way that company invoices are paid within 30 days at the latest. Otherwise, default interest will be generated. It is expected that the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, during the speech on the State of the Union next week will explain the implementation of the so-called "Relief Package for SMEs" (SME Relief Package), to which 18-page draft has had access to La Vanguardia.
Antoni Cañete, president of Pimec and vice president of the European employers' association for SMEs SME United, has spent years promoting a legislative change in the EU to avoid the problems that non-payments and late payment generate in SMEs. The last act in which he detailed the needs of the group was in a presentation on July 3 at the European Economic and Social Committee.
Cañete explained yesterday that "it is important that the package for SMEs is not processed as a directive but as a regulation, so it will be immediately mandatory in all EU countries." When it comes to a directive, it is the member countries that must transpose it, which ends up taking the entire process even years. With a regulation it is immediate, says Pimec.
After the announcement scheduled for next week, the regulation must be ratified by the European Parliament and then by the Council. The forecast handled by the Catalan employers' association for SMEs is that it may enter into force at the beginning of next year.
"Europe has taken the fight against late payment very seriously," says Cañete, before detailing that each country must create the mechanism that controls that the payment regulation is complied with and, failing that, the payment of interest on delay. What is expected are interests equivalent to the legal interest of the money plus eight points.
The package also contemplates an improvement in access to financing for SMEs. This is an increase in the allocations for the InvestEU program and for the European Innovation Council (EIC) that will allow investment operations of between 15 and 50 million euros.
Another of the objectives is to improve the access of SMEs to public procurement by simplifying small contracts, for example. In regulatory matters, the EU draft contemplates the strengthening of some spaces for dialogue to take into account the opinion of SMEs in legislative activity.
Another measure is to simplify certain current reporting obligations, such as auditing and accounting, which are unnecessary for small companies.
Pimec highlighted yesterday that the European Commission is committed to the new package for the idea of "thinking small first" to take the sector into account when establishing the terms of application of new regulations or carrying out an analysis of the impact on the SMEs of the new standards.
The Commission also wants to facilitate the creation of companies in just three days and with a maximum cost of 100 euros. Another of the commitments is to improve tax conditions for company transfers such as inheritance and gift tax.
The last major area that the Commission's package on SMEs plans to attack is the improvement of training and skills in different areas of staff in this type of company.
