European Entrepreneurs CEA - PME

12/10/2026

📢 We are pleased to support the , taking place on 16 November in Brussels.
This year’s edition will focus on how to boost demand for sovereign solutions, increase their uptake and create the conditions for European companies to scale and compete globally.

Expect 500+ participants, policy discussions, company demos, networking opportunities and 4 awards dedicated to .

Don’t miss the opportunity to be part of this conversation!
🔗 Register here: https://www.digitalsme.eu/events/digital-sme-summit-2026/

25/09/2026

If Europe wants growth, it needs innovation. If it wants innovation, it needs SMEs and Mid-Caps in the lead.

That conviction ran through every session of the European Entrepreneurs Creative Days 2026. And now it's written down.

Christoph Ahlhaus and Jorge Portugal, President and Co-President of European Entrepreneurs CEA-PME, and John Edwards, Secretary-General of EURASHE, have signed the "Common Declaration for a Lisbon Manifesto for Incremental Innovation".

The focus on innovation is deliberate. It's how most SMEs and Mid-Caps innovate, and it deserves a far bigger place in Europe's growth strategy.

Thank you to our member COTEC Portugal for hosting us.

25/09/2026

"Innovation is about jobs."
For Carlos Moedas, Mayor of Lisbon and former European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, the logic is simple: good jobs depend on companies competitive enough to sustain them, and that competitiveness depends on innovation.

It's a point SMEs and Mid-Caps know well. Innovation isn't an abstraction for them. It's what lets a company grow, pay better, and hire more.

Our thanks to Mayor Carlos Moedas for welcoming the European Entrepreneurs Creative Days delegation to Lisbon City Hall, and to our member COTEC Portugal for making it happen.

His message on Europe's task echoes ours: turn knowledge into innovation, and innovation into growth.

24/09/2026

Most innovation in Europe doesn't start in a lab. It starts inside a company, most likely an SME, improving a product, a process, or a way of working, and it spreads when entrepreneurs share what worked.
That's the idea behind the European Entrepreneurs Creative Days, now fully underway in Lisbon.

Hosted by COTEC Portugal, our local member, representatives of our members from across Europe are comparing notes on how knowledge moves between companies, how innovation gets financed, and how peer-to-peer collaboration turns one firm's success into many.

The other aspect of the work is about policy. Members are coordinating a shared push to make innovation one of the key drivers of Europe's growth, including the incremental, everyday innovation that SMEs and Mid-Caps deliver and that EU support schemes too often miss.

More from Lisbon soon.

23/09/2026

"Yes to Made in Europe. But let's not only punish others for errors we made ourselves."

That was Stefan Moritz's message in Paris yesterday. Our Secretary General spoke, alongside Co-Rapporteur of the IAA, Pierre Jouvet, and the Vice-President of M-ETI, our member, Olivier Schiller, and moreover representatives of Valeo, Schneider Electric, Thyssenkrupp, Ferroglobe and Bayer Pharma, on a panel at "Made in Europe: l'heure du choix," the conference hosted at Bercy by Sébastien Martin, French Minister Delegate for Industry.

European preference can open doors for companies that produce here. It can't fix why producing here has become so expensive. For SMEs and Mid-Caps, that comes down to two things: the hours lost to paperwork and the energy bill at the end of the month.

Our and our 3 priority demands for more growth take on both. The aim is to make Made in Europe the competitive choice, not just the protected one.

EU industry ministers meet at the Competitiveness Council in Brussels tomorrow. This is the conversation we want them to have.

21/09/2026

Thank you 🙏

To the entrepreneurs who travelled from across the continent, the EU officials and MEPs who met them as partners, and everyone who made the SME2B Business Forum Europe 2026 a real exchange - this one's for you.

We've gathered the afternoon into a short highlights film: keynotes, panels, and a shared conviction that Europe's businesses are ready to do what they do best - innovate, invest, create jobs and grow.

The conversations don't stop here. We're already turning them into the positions we bring to the EU institutions.

▶️ Watch the highlights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4SwHp-i_Rg

Entrepreneurs, SMEs, Mid-Caps and EU policymakers came together in ...

18/09/2026

Europe's growth crisis is homemade. So is the cure. That's the logic behind our for Europe, launched on 2 September at the SME2B Business Forum Europe in Brussels - and behind the we've now put in front of the Commission President and the Competitiveness Council.

The thesis is simple: real growth comes from letting Europe's micro, small, mid-size and Mid-Cap companies scale up - not from protecting them or subsidising incumbents.

We built the Agenda around four engines of growth:

🔹 Innovation - recognise and back the incremental, in-house innovation SMEs already do: better vocational training, fab-labs, and more cascade funding under FP10 and the European Competitiveness Fund, so companies can pilot before they scale.
🔹 Technology - a genuinely permissive approach to key enabling technologies, full technological neutrality in energy, faster digital public services (eID, the Business Wallet), and sovereign servers and cloud.
🔹 Investment - cut red tape ten times beyond current Commission ambition (€50bn/year in compliance savings, not €5bn), shift from subsidies to loan guarantees and tax credits, and turn the ETS back into compensation for net-zero investment instead of a CO2 tax.
🔹 Productivity - complete the Single Market (services, savings and capital), fairer and more reciprocal trade, and a real talent agenda.

Because some of this can't wait, we've named three priorities that need to move now - our Brussels Accelerator Act:

1️⃣ Simplification felt on the shop floor
2️⃣ Emergency action on energy costs
3️⃣ A level playing field and reciprocity with global competitors

The Competitiveness Council meets on 24 September. The next MFF, the ETS review and the simplification agenda will all be judged by one test: do they make it easier - not harder - for a small company to scale, and for a mid-sized one to become a champion?

We want more Growth for Europe!

👉 Read the New Growth Agenda and the Brussels Accelerator Act: https://www.european-entrepreneurs.org/a-new-growth-agenda-for-europe/

10/09/2026

SME2B Business Forum Europe 2026 brought entrepreneurs from Italy, Germany, Spain, France, Belgium and beyond to Brussels - not to wait for change, but to shape it. A full day of ideas and energy, built around one shared conviction: Europe can grow again, and its SMEs and Mid-Caps are the ones who'll make it happen.

We launched A New Growth Agenda for Europe - a concrete plan powered by four engines: innovation, technology, investment and productivity. We put it to founders who've built real companies, to policymakers shaping the next budget, to experts on energy and the Single Market. And we did it with the European Commission in the room, because good ideas get sharper when everyone's at the table.

Then we celebrated - because a community this determined deserves a party. Bubbles, BBQ, and a room full of people who'd rather build things than wait for permission.

Europe's Mittelstand isn't asking to be protected. It's ready to grow, and it showed exactly what that looks like.

Thank you to everyone who brought their voice, their ideas and their optimism. This is just the beginning.

27/08/2026

⏳ Last call. Registration for the SME2B Business Forum Europe 2026 closes tomorrow, Friday 28 August, at 12:00 (Brussels time).

If a New Growth Agenda for Europe - built by and for SMEs and Mid-Caps - is a conversation you want to be in, now's the moment to lock in your place. One day in Brussels, 2 September: panels on Europe's energy future and its next budget, open working groups to shape the proposals, B2B networking, and the SME Summer Party 2026 to close it out.

➡️ Register now: https://www.european-entrepreneurs.org/sme2b-business-forum-europe-2026-we-want-more-growth/

26/08/2026

Ask an SME or Mid-Cap what's shrinking margins, and energy costs come up fast. Add the price of carbon under the ETS, and you've named two of the biggest variables in whether a European business can compete at all.

That's the ground Panel 1 covers - Europe's Next Energy Policy: Costs, Markets, CO2 emission trading.

We’re glad to welcome Elisabetta Gualmini, Member of the EP EMPL and ITRE Committees, MEP (Azione/Renew - I), to this panel, and thank her for her interest in the issues that European businesses currently face. Fewer topics matter more to European SMEs & Mid-Caps trying to plan past next quarter.

📅 Wednesday, 2 September 2026
📍 Le Bouche à Oreille, Brussels
➡️ https://www.european-entrepreneurs.org/sme2b-business-forum-europe-2026-we-want-more-growth/

Registrations are open. More speakers to be announced.