The working document, requested by the ECON Committee of the European Parliament, analyses initiatives funded by the Recovery and Resilience Facility to support SMEs in the digital transition. The report concludes that while there are many areas of good practice, risks remain due to the lack of outcome-based objectives, the complexity of some schemes and relatively low levels of funding in relation to the level of ambition in some cases.
The introduction of targets based on (preferably harmonised) competency frameworks and digital maturity assessments could help to establish the added value of SME support initiatives. Digital technologies are an important driver of economic growth. They can improve internal business processes and support the development of products and services, including breakthrough innovations, as well as supporting businesses to scale up into new markets and/or new geographical areas.
The European Commission’sDESI index, which measures the digital intensity of businesses in areas such as the use of e-commerce, cloud services and artificial intelligence (AI), shows that progress has been made in some countries, but gaps and gradual improvements remain, especially among SMEs. For example, in 2021, only 18 % of EU SMEs sold online and 14 % of EU businesses (of all services) used big data. This is well below the Digital Decade targets, which require more than 90 % of European SMEs to reach at least a basic level of digital intensity and 75 % of EU companies to use cloud, AI and big data.
Initiatives to support the digitalisation of SMEs under the Recovery and Resilience Facility
The Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) aims to provide funding to support initiatives addressing this gap. The 26 plans that have been approved so far contain EUR 24 billion of measures to support the digitalisation of businesses, with a further EUR 18 billion supporting R & Dand the deployment of digital capacities. Some Member States allocated significant resources through their Recovery and Resilience Plans (RRPs) to the digitalisation of businesses.
A review of the recovery and resilience plans in 6 Member States highlights several examples of good practice, including:
- Providing ‘digital maturity’ assessments for SMEs and establishing a competence framework
- Setting concrete results-based targets, with reference to improving digital maturity and skills and the commitment to produce an independent report on the achievements of the digital strategy
- Establishing European Digital Innovation Hubs as a ‘one-stop-shop’ for a range of support for SMEs
- Digital transition and innovation in the production system
- Multi-faceted initiatives to support SMEs and targeted support for quantum computing research
- Setting up a ‘SME steering group’ to advise on a new digital strategy