European Business Centres in India and China for the internationalisation of SMEs
In accordance with the Small Business Act focusing on supporting SMEs (see Synopsis 2008/5) the European Commission (EC) started to establish European Business Centres to help SMEs with the legal and cultural challenges of the growing markets outside Europe and to enable them to fully benefit from the new opportunities.
The first centre was opened by Eurochambres in India in 2008 with the aim of providing not only business advice, but also technological support. In fact the European Business and Technology Centre (EBTC) in New Delhi helps European companies and researchers to access the market and promotes European clean technology in India with a focus on the areas of energy, transport, biotechnology and environment. Its main activities are to gather knowledge on India and to make it available to the European business community as well as to assist companies in contacting already established EU service providers in India (e.g. Chamber of Commerce, science and technology departments, regional trade promotion agencies). The EBTC is running with a total budget of €14.5 million over an eight year period. In addition, other regional offices will be opened in other major industrial cities in India - in particular Bengaluru (Bangalore), Mumbai (Bombay) and Kolkata (Calcutta) - in order to enhance the network with the emerging industries concentrated there.
A second centre was meant to be established in Beijing, China, in 2009 with a budget of €5 million over five years, but the EC has not awarded the contract to set up the office yet. Other similar offices should be opened in other strategic cities in the world during the upcoming years, in particular in Bangkok and in Moscow.
This strategy could in some cases duplicate already existing services provided by the Member States and the private sector. The EC should therefore take care of not competing unfairly with them and support areas and countries with less developed networks. This strategy has also been criticized to lack coherence and BusinessEurope has underlined the need of an evaluation of the real impact of these services for the companies.
More information on the Indian EBTC can be found under: http://www.ebtc.eu/
