Report on the work of the TF on SME Data item 6 of the agenda Structural Business Statistics Working Group 14 April 2015, Luxembourg Tatiana Mrlianová

Task Force on SME Data During the last Structural Business Statistics Working Group meeting held on 20 November 2014 in Luxembourg, it was stressed that there was a strong need for better statistics on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) The reason: the current SBS data cannot provide sufficient information to the policy makers

Task Force on SME Data To find a way how to better respond to the users' needs, Eurostat in cooperation with the DG Enterprise set up a Task Force on Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (TF on SMED) Participants are EC and 6 Member States: DE, DK, IT, NL, PL, UK

Task Force on SME Data Six main areas for further development were identified: 1.reporting the "correct" number of small and medium sized enterprises 2. introduction of an additional size class breakdown on enterprises, which do not employ any full-time employees except the owner (One Person Enterprises – OPE)

Task Force on SME Data 3. inclusion of all NACE economic sectors 4. discussion of the feasibility of legal form breakdown for enterprises 5. the consistency between the SBS and business demography data has to be improved 6. exploration of the feasibility of regional breakdowns (based on NUTS categories)

Task Force on SME Data The first working meeting of the Task Force on Small and Medium Sized Enterprise Data (SMED) took place on 5 February 2015 in the premises of the European Commission (DG GROW) in Brussels The second working meeting of the Task Force on SMED took place on 13 April 2015 in Luxembourg.

1 st Task Force on SME Data Interesting findings: 1. control links: Germany carried out a study where they tried to find out whether an SME is independent or a part of an domestic/foreign enterprise group DE found out that a relatively high number of medium-sized enterprises (i.e. 41% of all the medium-sized enterprises) are in fact dependent SMEs

1 st Task Force on SME Data Another issue which was addressed was the huge variability in the application of thresholds when compiling business statistics The SME thresholds across EU regarding the turnover vary immensely across the EU Member States (e.g. from € 0 in IT to almost €100,000 in the UK)

1 st Task Force on SME Data 2. One Person Enterprises: In general, the EU Member States address differently the issue of One Person Enterprise In Denmark, the size class "zero employees" is of relatively huge importance, as they account for 53% of all enterprises, but their economic importance is minor (i.e. 7% of the total turnover) in all activities covered by SBS

1 st Task Force on SME Data 3. Inclusion of all economic sectors: In Denmark, administrative registers allow identifying enterprises in (nearly) all sectors For Italy, the obstacles with including other economic activities are the necessity of increasing the sample size as well as the expected greater complexity in the confidentiality treatment

1 st Task Force on SME Data 4. Legal form breakdown In Italy, it is possible to produce data according to different criteria of disaggregation, including by legal form, but not for all SBS variables There is also a relatively large range of legal forms which is constantly expanding.

1 st Task Force on SME Data 5. Consistency between SBS and business demography In the Netherlands, reasons for inconsistencies arise mainly from different underlying definitions and reference periods in SBS and BD In Germany, data is received as aggregates from the independent “Bundesländer, plus different definitions

1 st Task Force on SME Data 6. Regional breakdown - breakdown of regional data by size class would add complexity to the collection of data and to the treatment of confidentiality

2 nd Task Force on SME Data 1.reporting the "correct" number of small and medium sized enterprises: -breakdown into: independant, domestically and foreign controlled enterprises for 4 size class breakdowns feasible -TF proposes that all MSs would do this exercise -results would be presented to the SME Envoy in November

2 nd Task Force on SME Data 2. introduction of the additional size class breakdown of One Person Enterprises (OPE): -should a country-specific threshold be introduced (minimum turnover), where OPE above this threshold would need to be included in SBS? -guidance should be provided in the SBS Compiler's Guide -PL proposed to include more sectors for the 0-1 size class and less variables (only Turnover, # of persons employed and # of enterprises) for the final data in FRIBS

2 nd Task Force on SME Data 3. inclusion of all NACE economic sectors: - guidance on how to distinguish market and non- market activities should be provided in the SBS Compiler's Guide -MSs should be able to collect the data with limited effort - SBS WG could help to draw rules and guidelines

2 nd Task Force on SME Data 4. discussion of the feasibility of legal form breakdown for enterprises: - is it possible to define baskets of comparable legal structure in Europe that would be meaningful? e.g.: 1. sole proprietors, 2. capitals, 3. partnerships - how to treat for instance 4 legal units each with different legal forms that form an enterprise?

2 nd Task Force on SME Data 5. the consistency between the SBS and business demography data has to be improved: - no concrete proposal yet

2 nd Task Force on SME Data 6. exploration of the feasibility of regional breakdowns (based on NUTS categories): - the UK and DG REGIO are going to further investigate this topic NEXT meeting: 22 June 2015