Help for small and medium businesses” “

The latest round of negotiations of the World Trade Organization (WTO) ended with an apparent success at Doha, in Qatar. It’s now a question of seeing whether the new WTO rules will succeed in guaranteeing global development in a more balanced manner. To discuss the point, SirEurope met Gerhard Hueler , the Austrian director of the European Union of crafts and small and medium firms. What’s your comment on the results at Doha? “The fact that this round of negotiations ended with the intention to open a new one in the near future, and not only limited to the issues of agriculture and GATT, is positive. For Europe this will be an opportunity finally to be able to discuss the whole dossier of industry and world trade. So there are some reasons to be satisfied: the agenda of the next round of farm negotiations envisages the reduction of export subsidies, and this will help the poor countries to more easily occupy segments of the market; the influence of Europe is by now almost on a par with that of the USA. But there also exist reasons for concern. Small and medium European firms, for instance, do not consider the global market as a primary factor of profit: they’re more interested in local, regional or national markets and a permanent and stable development in Europe before anywhere else. From this point of view, Doha mainly satisfies big business”. How long will the situation of “economic colonization” by the rich countries continue?” The main point is that so far the rich countries have failed to implement policies capable of creating added value for the less developed countries: to this should be added the absolute lack of structures and institutions able to guarantee that profit and added value produced in the less developed countries will remain there and not be expatriated. It cannot yet be said with certainty whether the new WTO rules as such will be useful for the less developed countries. Personally, I believe that after Göteborg, Genoa and the terrorist attacks of 11 September the debate that has opened shows the willingness of the stronger countries to correct the imbalance of their relations with the weaker ones. Both the Commission and European big business know very well that in the long term this conflict is not even to the advantage of the richer countries”. What’s your judgement of EU policy towards small and medium-sized firms? “It’s no longer admissible to consider small firms as the poor relations of big business who need charity. It should be said, however, that the need to have different administrative rules for small and medium businesses is by now recognized: rules for the labour market, for the fiscal regime, for the environment, for social policy. The basic question is that most of the difficulties of small and medium firms may only be resolved by national policy. We try to cooperate as closely as possible with the Commission’s General Directorate of businesses, at least as regards awareness-raising, a field in which governments unfortunately don’t intervene much. What’s needed is not just that Europe or the member States should finance big projects here and there: but the creation of a better environment for small and medium-sized businesses”. “What are the prospects of this sector in the light of the Euro? “The single currency will undoubtedly represent a stimulus for the greater internationalization of firms in the Euro area. Doing business outside national frontiers will be easier, in spite of fiercer competition. I predict problems in the course of the first two weeks of January, because a revolution of this kind cannot be planned in detail by all medium-sized and small firms. But they are flexible and will adjust in a hurry, with a good dose of improvization too; they will invest – those who have not done so already – in electronic systems of payment that will facilitate trade and transactions”. G.A.G.