On the very day agreement was reached in the European Parliament on the draft Directive regarding company law to simplify procedures for the setting up of companies and for asset conservation and alteration, the European Commission presented a new initiative to facilitate business transmission and succession, especially for small and medium firms. Explaining the measure to the press, the Vice-President of the Executive and Commissioner for industrial and business policy Gunther Verheugen declared it is “unacceptable that thousands of economically sound firms and millions of secure jobs are lost each year due to the excessive complexity of practices for business transmission”. Brussels calculates in fact that the phenomenon annually affects some 690,000 businesses, for a total of just less than 3 million jobs. The Commission’s initiative is all the more urgent bearing in mind that a third of current European entrepreneurs will retire for reasons of age by 2020. The document invites the governments of member states to create suitable financial conditions for transmission and succession; raise the awareness of businessmen to encourage guardianship as a way of avoiding “too brusque” transfers; organize more transparent markets for company transmission; and reform tax systems. l lnone
