EU4Business presents its achievements at the 2022 Eastern Partnership Business Forum

On 17 and 18 October, the Czech Government hosted the Eastern Partnership (EaP) Business Forum. Organised by the Czech Ministry of Trade and Industry, this year’s edition focused on current geo-economic challenges and explored possible opportunities for enhanced economic cooperation and trade integration between the EU and EaP countries.

The Forum brought together high-level officials and private sector representatives from the EU and from its Eastern partners countries, as well as international financial institutions around ministerial panels, conferences, and project presentations. The discussions focused particularly on the energy transition, digitalization of the economy, smart cities, smart agriculture and investment screening.

The Business Forum was the occasion to present the results of the last EU4Business Initiative annual report. An umbrella initiative made of 108 EU-funded projects supporting SMEs, the EU4business initiative provides support in three priority areas: Access to Finance (A2F), access to Business Development Services (BDS) and Business Enabling Environment (BEE), with a total budget of nearly €900 million. The 2022 activity report shows a 9% increase in the number of SMEs supported by the EU compared to the previous year, with over 78,000 companies receiving assistance. SMEs receiving support have generated an estimated extra income of €2 billion in total and created an estimated 66,000 new jobs. Among them, a third were women-owned companies.

A flagship project under the EU4Business Initiative, the Eastern Partnership Trade HelpDesk was also showcased at the event. In sharing relevant trade and market information, this online platform aims at facilitating access to key trade information and at identifying trade opportunities for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in the region and with the EU. As national online platforms were recently launched in four partner countries, the live demonstration during the event allowed participants to clearly understand all possible features offered by the website and help centre.

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