On Tuesday I hosted a press conference at press centre Nieuwspoort in the Hague. After extensive lobbying and networking for about 3 weeks, I was able to get the weak position of European SMEs on the agenda in the Netherlands. As the Dutch representative of SUN&SUP, the "voice of the European start-up community", we are arguing that the European Union must act now to preserve rights for European SMEs in the new WTO agreement, equal to American SMEs. 
On the photo left, Prof. Henk de Haan, member of parliament for CDA, on the right Loek Hermans, chairman of MKB Nederland. A story in Dutch can be found here, English press release and all supporting documents here. While you are at the SUN&SUP website, please sign the on-line petition. All those who helped me getting access to the right people in the last couple of weeks, thanks again. Hopefully we’ll have the necessary impact!
3 Responses to “SMEs vs. WTO”
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September 20th, 2005 at 9:14
[...] Its more difficult in one country than another to do business. Thats the idea behind a study published last week by the World Bank, ranking 155 countries on a set of criteria including Starting a business, Hiring and firing, Getting credit, Protecting investors, Paying taxes and Trading across borders.For 2006, the top 3 countries in terms of “ease of doing business” are New Zealand, Singapore and the United States. The only two European countries who made it to the Top 10 are Denmark (8) and the UK (9). The Netherlands is showing up at an embarrassing 24th place. Any politicians around looking for ammunition to make some business friendly, sweeping changes? [...]
November 4th, 2005 at 23:13
[...] The Minister of International Trade mrs. Carien van Gennip sent a letter this week to the Dutch Parliament, answering MP-questions resulting from my June 21 press conference. In summary her (Dutch) letter covers three topics: [...]
November 14th, 2005 at 18:06
[...] It looks like the Dutch parliament is putting its arms around a Dutch Small Business Act now, a discussion I ignited with my June 21 press conference and subsequent reaction from the Dutch Minister of International Trade. Today I received an email from Dutch member of parliament Jan ten Hoopen (CDA) that he now submitted a formal request to the Dutch government through a “motion”. In his motion (click here to download as a PDF in Dutch) he requests “to develop a facility similar to the Small Business Act in the United States” “&with a government target of 23% of all procurement of products and technologies&” requesting a response before January 1, 2006. Taking into account the support earlier expressed by the political parties PvdA and VVD, this is likely to become a serious debate in Dutch parliament. [...]