Keynote speech by Commissioner Dombrovskis at the European Forum for Family Business

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for the invitation to join you this evening.

Family businesses hold a special place in the European economy. You reinvest in your communities, you keep jobs local, and you take a long-term view of risk and responsibility.

Many family businesses are also small and medium-sized enterprises, part of the backbone of our economy. SMEs make up 99.8% of all businesses in the EU. They employ almost 90 million people. And they create more than half of the added value in our economy. They drive Europe's job creation, innovation and competitiveness.

So, at a time when Europe's growth has been too low for too long, we need the dynamism and foresight of family businesses more than ever.

Are we serving those businesses as well as they are serving us? What can policymakers do to help them succeed?  And what should we prioritise to make a real, tangible difference on the ground, so that running a business day in, day out becomes a little easier?

The easiest way to find out is to ask. That is exactly what the Foundation for Family Businesses set out to do in a recent survey. They spoke to 2,100 managers across seven countries: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden.  Around four in five of them run family businesses of all sizes.

And the results are striking. 83% percent said regulatory burdens are holding back their investments. Not in marginal areas, but in the very things that drive competitiveness: digitalisation and IT, expansion into new markets, their own infrastructure, and the training of their people.

Let that sink in. More than eight out of ten businesses are telling us that the rules meant to support them are, in practice, standing in the way of their future.

For family businesses especially, the costs are simply too high. A large listed company can afford a compliance department. Too often, a family business cannot.