The Association of Self-Employed Workers (ATA) met, a few days ago, with the MEPs to verify that the Executive is developing correctly the European Recovery Plan. ATA has requested the elimination of the obstacles that today hinder the arrival of said funds to the business fabric.
“The self-employed do not receive the funds. Of the more than 3,300,000 self-employed, barely 5 out of 100 have applied for the funds, they do not reach 170,000 self-employed and we must reach at least 1 million. Our goal is to improve and we have to do it now”has assured Celia Ferrero, vice president of ATA.
“There is no doubt that the funds are an opportunity and you have to see them as such. But the reality is that the business fabric does not receive these funds from the EU today. And if we talk about the self-employed, much less”. “Around 11,000 million euros have been transferred at some point to calls to the business fabric, but, if we analyze in the field of self-employed, there are only 70,000 self-employed those who have benefited from the digital kit”. “It is essential to emphasize the support of the self-employed to be able to access European funds or they are diluted in pure bureaucracy”, added Ferrero.
From ATA they suggest that the agenda should reflect the following improvements:
- The accompaniment of the self-employed in accessing subsidies and tenders and understanding their preparation as an eligible expense or even the start-up of a free service for SMEs and the self-employed based on a public/private collaboration model for access assistance funds and the preparation of applications and projects.
- Apply the SME’s test to the bases of subsidies and calls in order to avoid any criterion that is exclusive and discriminatory in access to SMEs and the Self-Employed (% of co-financing, contribution of financial information not legally required to small companies: audits, balance sheets, books, Environmental impact, excessive guarantees).
- Transparency and information: executive summary with the relevant terms of the bases in understandable administrative language and accessible online presentation tools with tutorials.
- Increase the periods of the calls. We consider it unfeasible to prepare the application and the documentation with deadlines of less than 40 days.
- Establish an accessible list of entities authorized to grant endorsements and guarantees.
- Flexibility in the extension of deadlines for execution and justification, as well as in the modification of the bases to adjust them to the problems that are detected, as long as the objectives committed in the milestones are not breached. The digital KIT should be a point of reference for the design of other programs in which it is the digital agent who is looking for the digitization of SMEs and self-employed and volunteer representatives help and accompany in the presentation of the application.
- Tax incentives.
“The NG funds are the opportunity to improve the competitiveness of our country, the well-being of the people and the business fabric. If we want the funds to have an important reflection on the country’s economy, we have to think that these funds have to reach the business fabric”has concluded the vice president of ATA.
