SMEs make up over 99% of European Union (EU) businesses (defined on the <250 employment criterion only, as used in Eurostat Structural Business Statistics) and are, therefore, the central part of the EU-27 economy. This report mainly evaluates their economic performance in 2022 and 2023, and forecasts their outlook for 2024 focusing mainly on three key variables: Value added expressed in both current and constant prices, Em-ployment and Number of firms.
In 2023, real-terms value added declined by 1.6%. Regarding 2024, a further decrease of 1.0% is expected. Employment increased in 2023 by 1.8%, and for 2024, the growth is predicted to slow down a bit, reaching 0.8%. Over the broader period of the last five years, value added in real terms increased by 9.5% and employ-ment grew by 5.9%. Within the overall SME population, micro-SMEs performed better than small and medium-sized SMEs in both categories, value added and employment in 2023. A similar pattern is expected for the fol-lowing year as well.
The report also analyses SMEs’ performance through a granular breakdown of the distribution of EU-27 SMEs across the 14 industrial ecosystems. The contribution of SMEs and large enterprises to the change in value added and employment across these ecosystems varies greatly. In some ecosystems like ‘digital’, ‘tourism’, ‘energy-renewables’ and ‘cultural and creative industries’ SME growth in 2023 was significant, while their per-formance in ‘textiles’ and ‘electronics’ is poor. The in-depth exploration across EU-27 Member States reveals spatial patterns among neighbouring countries exhibiting similar performance.
The future SME performance may be influenced by the implementation of the Open Strategic Autonomy (OSA) paradigm, which seeks to reduce EU’s dependencies with non-EU countries in strategic value chains, while re-maining open and active in the globalised economy. The analysis shows that SMEs are already significantly ac-tive within specific value chains considered strategic under the OSA framework, contributing essential innova-tion and dynamism, developing and delivering specialised solutions, and providing crucial support services. The OSA paradigm entails risks for SMEs, but can also represent an opportunity for SMEs to improve their competi-tiveness and overall economic performance. The report, therefore, contributes to ongoing policy discussions by identifying key policy initiatives needed to facilitate the successful integration of SMEs into the OSA framework.
KATSINIS Anastasis Avgerinos;
LAGÜERA GONZÁLEZ Jaime;
DI BELLA Laura;
ODENTHAL Ludger;
HELL Markus;
LOZAR Borut;
2024-12-03
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC138678
978-92-9469-822-3 (online),
2467-0162 (online),
OP EA-AK-24-001-EN-N (online),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC138678,
10.2826/355464 (online),
