Negative views of entrepreneurship must be addressed, says Minister Ahern

The prevailing attitudes to entrepreneurship and “the current balance of risks and rewards” appear to make many Europeans less inclined to become entrepreneurs, the Minister for Trade and Commerce, Mr Michael Ahern TD, has told an international conference in Dublin. “This negative perception must be addressed urgently and at all levels if the European Union is to have any chance of reaching the 10-year targets for employment and competitiveness set at the Lisbon Summit in 2000” the Minister said.

Mr Ahern was speaking this morning (Tuesday, 29^th June) at the opening of a two-day conference in Dublin Castle on the European Charter for Small Enterprises. The conference, the final formal event in Ireland of Ireland’s EU Presidency, is designed to stimulate exchange of good practice to help improve the small business environment throughout the EU. The attendance includes senior officials and business representatives from 34 countries, including all the EU Member States.

Minister Ahern said the small enterprises charter, drawn up in 2000, was one of the key instruments designed at delivering the Lisbon Summit objectives. The signatory countries had pledged themselves to developing a regulatory and administrative framework conducive to entrepreneurial activity, facilitating access by small enterprises to the best research and technology, and ensuring access to markets “on the basis of the least burdensome regulatory requirements that are consistent with overriding public policy objectives”.

Minister Ahern added “Entrepreneurs are not a homogenous group. On the contrary they are extraordinarily diverse, coming from a wide range of backgrounds, with very different educational qualifications and skills, very mixed age and experience profiles, very different attitudes to risk and very different motivations. Faced with such diversity, it seems clear that there can be no single magic formula that will deliver significant progress in improving the entrepreneurial culture in an economy.

“On the contrary it points to the need for a wide range of diverse actions, each tailored to the needs of particular niches or sub-groups. Like most countries we, in Ireland, have a number of programmes in place to assist enterprises and improve the business environment. These include sponsorship of entrepreneurship programmes in schools, support for research and development linkages between enterprises and the universities, and support for availability of finance for enterprises, including critical seed capital and early stage financing.”

The Minister said that exchange of best practice between Member States was one of the keys to success, and that this “open method of coordination” was already recognised as such by the various EU programmes designed to assist small and medium-sized businesses.

The EU Commissioner for Enterprise, Mr Jan Figel, said small and medium-sized businesses provided more than two-thirds of total private sector employment in the EU, a much higher proportion than in the US or Japan. “Europe’s competitiveness depends strongly on our small businesses. They are a key source of jobs, a breeding ground for business ideas and a main driver of entrepreneurship” he said.

He added “The often large differences in terms of economic performance between the new and old Member States imply real challenges. But enlargement has also broadened the spectrum of entrepreneurial traditions and solutions to common policy challenges”.

The conference concludes tomorrow (Wednesday) with an address by the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Mary Harney TD.

ENDS/TC106