The EU Action Plan to improve access to finance for SMEs presents the various EU policies and measures to make access to finance easier for Europe's 23 million SMEs.

It covers actions to improve the venture capital market and facilitate access to financial resources.

It contains also financial products to ease access to bank lending, for an amount of at least € 20 billion allocated to SMEs from the new Multiannual Financial Framework.

A new survey published today shows that difficult access to finance is among the top concerns (15%) of SMEs. Almost two-thirds (63%) of the EU SMEs who applied for a bank loan during the last six months received the whole amount they asked for.

However, 11% of the applications were rejected and 17% received less than they applied for. In addition 4% declined the loan offer from the bank because they found the conditions unacceptable. So about one third of the SMEs did not get the finance they had planned for.