Between the 20th and 21st of May, Mrs Joana Peixinho – Junior policy advisor at EFB- represented European Family Businesses, at the SME Envoy Network meeting in Warsaw where several important topics were discussed.

On the topic of Business transfers, she thanked the European Commission for the Business Transfers workshop on April 23rd and highlighted the importance of business transfers as a strategic opportunity.

In addition, she highlighted EFB’s concern that in several EU member states — including the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Finland, and Spain — the long-standing exemptions provided under the 1994 Commission Recommendation are being questioned.

EFB called for a new Recommendation on Business Transfers, to modernise and reinforce the 1994 framework to reflect today’s economic and generational realities and for the SME Envoys to share best practices across borders and to support national efforts that promote continuity and renewal in the SME landscape.

On Omnibus IV on Small Mid-Caps (SMC), Mrs Peixinho thanked the Commission for their work developing the SMC definition as the mid-cap topic is something that EFB has been working on with it’s members for several years. Moreover, the importance of the SMC definition to existing companies as they seek to scale-up in the single market and to go for growth was also highlighted as was EFB’s suggestion for the development of a large mid-cap definition at the European level in the future.