EURACTIV: TTIP Negotiators asked to ‘Think Small First’

06/02/2016

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May 30, 2016 I By: DANIELA VINCENTI In a push to make the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) work for SMEs, small and medium-sized business owners have asked for a carefully-crafted deal that would reflect their needs not only in a dedicated chapter, but across the full treaty. “We want a carefully-crafted TTIP that promotes economic growth, from which SMEs can then benefit,” said Ulrike Rabmer-Koller, president of UEAPME, the European Association of Craft, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises. “A specific chapter in TTIP on SMEs must reflect their interests. We welcome the inclusion of that chapter, but we also urge these needs to be reflected in all the other chapters too,” she added, insisting that Europe should push for the ‘Think Small First’ principle when it comes to regulatory cooperation. 99% of European and US companies—over 20 million in the EU, and 28 million in the US – are SMEs. The EU-US trade deal is supposed to create new opportunities especially for SMEs, given that trade barriers tend to disproportionately burden smaller firms, which have fewer resources to overcome them than larger firms. To read the full article, please click here.