What changed

MOTION FOR A EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT RESOLUTION

P10_TA(2025)0300

on accessAccess to finance for SMEs and scale-ups

(2025/2072(INI))

Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs

PE772.123

European Parliament resolution of 26 November 2025 on access to finance for SMEs and scale-ups (2025/2072(INI))

The European Parliament,

– having regard to the report of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (A10-0185/2025),

✦ Formal Replaces decimal points with commas in percentages, aligning with EU typography conventions.

A. whereas micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) represent the backbone of European business, with SMEs accounting for 99.899,8 % of all enterprises, 65.265,2 % of employment and 53.153,1 % of the value added in the non-financial business sector in the EU in 2023;

B. whereas the EU as a whole – and especially its largest economies – is currently experiencing slow economic growth and problems as companies are losing competitiveness to third countries, aggravated by the consequences of the pandemic, the energy crisis and Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which have particularly affected SMEs and the economies of countries along the EU’s eastern border;

34. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council and the Commission.

EXPLANATORY STATEMENT

Europe does not lack entrepreneurial energy; it struggles to turn promising start-ups into globally competitive scale-ups that choose to expand from, and remain listed in, the Union. The core diagnosis underlying this own-initiative report is therefore simple: our bottleneck is the scale-up phase, not company creation. The causes are well-known and widely acknowledged in recent flagship diagnostics (Draghi, Letta) and by the Commission’s new Start-up and Scale-up Strategy: an overly complex and unpredictable regulatory environment, fragmentation of rules and markets, and a financing ecosystem that remains underdeveloped in risk capital for late-stage growth. These conditions push many high-potential firms to rely on non-EU investors and to scale abroad.

First, on the regulatory environment. The report takes seriously the evidence that excessive and duplicative obligations—often stemming from the European Green Deal—have raised compliance costs and uncertainty, hitting smaller firms hardest. A substantial share of companies now view reporting requirements as an obstacle to investment, and a majority of SMEs flag regulatory obstacles and administrative burden as their biggest challenge—pressures that are even more acute for start-ups and micro-enterprises.

The report also recognises that bank lending remains the primary external funding source for SMEs, which makes the proportionality of banking rules and the avoidance of duplicate reporting especially important for credit provision to the real economy.

Second, on private capital. Europe needs to mobilise household savings and institutional investors more effectively and channel them into productive equity and quasi-equity for SMEs and scale-ups. This requires better investor information and protection, simple retail products, and improved financial literacy, alongside stable, attractive tax and regulatory frameworks. Public funding should not crowd out private investment; it should be catalytic in crowding-in private capital, and leveraging the EIB Group where it has comparative advantage.

Third, on the scale-up finance gap specifically, late-stage growth capital within the EU is insufficient, which is why many European champions turn to non-European investors and markets. The report’s aim is to increase the supply of long-term patient capital in Europe by mobilising insurers, pension funds and banks under a prudentially sound, proportionate framework; by strengthening co-investment platforms and networks (including regionally anchored vehicles and angel communities), and by ensuring EU-level instruments—such as the forthcoming European Tech-Champions initiative—are adequately capitalised and accessible across all Member States through streamlined procedures. Crucially, access to finance should follow criteria of efficiency, profitability and scalability; the goal is to mobilise more European capital without discriminating against foreign capital, within an open and globally competitive framework.

Fourth, on market architecture. A truly competitive ecosystem combines strong national markets with a strong internal market. Healthy competition among Member States—especially in regulatory and economic approaches—can be a driver of dynamism, provided it does not erect barriers to cross-border capital allocation. In this spirit, the report emphasises enabling conditions and voluntary, complementary EU frameworks that respect subsidiarity. It invites clarity on any potential “28th regime”: if introduced, it must be strictly voluntary, co-created with the private sector, and designed to simplify—not duplicate—rules so as to attract private investors to European start-ups and scale-ups. It also calls for practical guidance tools and one-stop-shops to help SMEs navigate divergent corporate, labour, insolvency, tax and IP regimes, and for better EU-wide access-to-finance dashboards that inform firms without adding reporting burdens.

In sum, the strategy is to make Europe the easiest place to scale: cut red tape that tangibly frees capacity to innovate; crowd-in private capital (retail and institutional) with simple, trusted channels; close the late-stage equity gap so our best firms stay and list here; and build a competitive ecosystem that respects subsidiarity while lowering cross-border frictions. This report aims to offer a balanced, actionable path to that outcome—open to global investment, anchored in market principles, and focused on unlocking the full potential of European enterprises.