However, a larger issue throughout the European Union is increasing the cross-border business activities of SMEs. Euractiv writes:

[M]ore than 99% of EU companies are small and medium-sized enterprises with no more than 250 employees and a maximum turnover of €50 million. However, only 8% of them engage in cross-border trade and just 5% have subsidiaries or joint ventures abroad, according to the European Commission.

According to experts, the key barrier is differing tax regimes.

When it comes to intra-EU trade of goods and services, different tax systems – which trigger high compliance costs – are seen as the main obstacle facing small businesses. European Commission figures from 2008 showed that cross-border taxation costs can make up to 2.5% of turnover for SMEs, as opposed to a mere 0.02% for larger businesses.

The ideal solution is to introduce a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB), according to Andrea Benassi, secretary-general of SME federation UEAPME.

No news on when this initiative might be realized, however.

via EurActiv.com – Crossing borders: A tall order for SMEs | EU – European Information on Enterprise & Jobs.

The European Commission has launched the new online service “eBusiness Guide for SMEs: eBusiness software and services in the European market”, which can be found on the European Commission’s Europa portal. This service gives enterprises an overview of the eBusiness and information and communication technology (ICT) market and helps them select the proper software products, solutions, and ICT service providers.

Providers need to register and provide overall information on their products and services in their national language. Then, users of the online service can find specific solutions by selecting a certain country and language. The service is free of charge. Currently, this tool features more than 1,000 eBusiness solutions providers and 1,500 products, including open-source software solutions.

You can find the eBusiness Guide at http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/e-bsn/ebusiness-solutions-guide/.

The EU has committed itself to expanding the use of renewable energies by 20%, achieving a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a 20% increase in energy efficiency, all by 2020.

ICT products and services currently cause about 8% of the consumption of electric power of the European Union. By that they cause about 2% of all CO2 emmissions in Europe.

On the other hand ICT can act as an enabler to save electricity in energyintensive sectors like buildings, transport and logistics. EU estimates that ICT can reduce the CO2 emmissions in these sectors by 15% until 2020.

You can find more details at http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/sustainable_growth/energy_efficiency/index_en.htm

I was shocked to learn that 61.3% of applicants haven’t passed a foreign language exam. Only 30% have a medium level certificate, and 7.1% have high level language knowledge. (The source, in Hungarian, is here)

It is sad that these figures refer to university applicants, and not just those who have completed their secondary education.

In my opinion, one result of secondary education should be a strong knowledge of one or preferably two foreign languages. Unfortunately, this is not the current situation in Hungary. The only chance for more than 60% percent of the students is to make up for this deficiency during their university years.

I assume that your country is in a better situation. Could you share some statistics?

The world’s economy is based on growth, and growth implies competition. If one grows, the other one shrinks, that’s a law.

Until a few years ago this has been restricted to businesses only. All sectors of industry and trade, from the lone entrepreneur to the multinational giant underlie competition, and naturally, there’s always the question of who’s the biggest, richest, best etc.

Recently, in connection with the commercialisation of public services of all kinds, research and education entered the game. Schools and universities find themselves in all kinds of rankings, the quality of life is being measured, the businessability (my creation) of countries is published and thus Hungary suddenly must learn of its unfriendliness towards start ups, and such listings themselves could be submitted to a ranking …

What does this have to do with innovation awards?Everything. Bernhard Schmid asked in his post, whether there were similar awards in neighbouring countries – yes, there are, plenty. BUT: The question is their quality. Everybody stages awards and contests nowadays, and their results and publicity are – except for, maybe, the Nobel Prize and the Oscar etc., of diminishing importance. There is – back to my previous lines – a competition among awards as well, there’s rankings, I’d call them meta-rankings, as an award is a ranking in itself.

What do I want to say here? I say, yes, I would agree with a Centrope Innovation Award (Did I create a trademark here?) if the organisers manage to give it appropriate quality and importance. Again, as in many other aspects of cross border collaboration, it would need intensive networking between all relevant parties and a sound concept that – competition! – dumps the rest of the inflationary contest offering into oblivion.

Make a thing the world looks at, and you win. Easily spoken, difficult to execute. But yes, let’s think about a Centrope ICT whatsoever Innovation Award. The brains in these countries deserve it.

I decided to return the favor by linking to the site and telling you all a little bit about it.

Like nowEurope, ArticStartup is written by a group of writers, many of them entrepreneurs. I don’t (yet) know any of the writers or editors personally, but I did find an interview with Jüri Kaljundi, a well-known Estonian tech entrepreneur who occasionally contributes to nowEurope.

While the blog mainly focuses on Baltic and Nordic startups I came across this article about Prezi, a Hungarian startup that has been generating good publicity beyond our borders.

I was also interested to read about ICT activity in Lithuania, a country I have never visited:

Who would have believed that the country with the highest mobile subscription rate worldwide (138% as per World Economic Forum’s World Competitiveness report), the broadest high-speed mobile broadband coverage and the densest network of public internet access points in Europe is the small nation of  Lithuania, sandwiched between Latvia, Belarus, Poland, Kaliningrad and the Baltic sea?

I also discovered an Estonian company which provides a service I might actually use in another business. Fortumo is an Estonia portal that offers free access for website-owners and small businesses to monetize their user base through premium SMS messages. If you’ve ever looked into SMS payments, you know that mobile aggregators charge exorbitant fees for handling these transactions – up to 60% in some markets.

It’s good to have friends in the North!

So far it looks like an example of good practice. But, in my opinion, using IT in this area is a typical example of how to use IT to complicate the work of users.

Why there are three different big systems? Just because the ministries were not able to agree, so two ministries developed their own systems and the third developed a system which uses most of the operating programs.

Only one system uses an electronic signature and is totally online. So, the electronic submission is sufficient for the application. However, it is necessary after filling out the electronic applications with the other systems, to print the application and submit it in paper form! Usually in two or three copies … Why? To save the time and paper of official authorities.

All of the electronic systems have problems, some bigger than others. Very often when one is in a hurry, the online application is off-line or too slow …. It is better now than two years ago, when this system started. But even now you never know when some technical problem will arise.

In truth, the applications help in some way. They calculate some sums and the systems have implemented some control mechanisms. On the other hand, many aspects are more system-oriented then user-oriented. E.g. where it would be helpful to download data from external files, it is necessary to input records into the application manually, one-by-one … which is very time consuming. What would take only a couple minutes in spreadsheet takes several hours when the same data must be entered into slow and not very user-friendly online applications.

What is the experience in your country? Do you use your IT for simplifying the process of administration? Or do you find that the IT problem complicates this already administratively intensive process?

According to the World Bank, Hungary’s neighbors now provide a more competitive business environment, while the Slovaks lead the region in providing a cozy home to global capitalism:

Hungary is the second most expensive place in terms of gross national product percent capitation to start up a new company in the region after Poland. Almost every country in the Central Europe Estate region beats Hungary, according to the World Bank survey. Slovakia is well ahead in 36th place due to its business-friendly reputation and flat tax.

But wait, there’s more bad news. (Are the Chinese actually mocking Hungary?)

More surprising perhaps is that the two European Union hopefuls, Romania and Bulgaria, are ranked 49th and 54th respectively.

In terms of the business environment for startups, Hungary slipped from 80th to 87th position in 2008. This means the Magyars have sunk below even the Balkans. For shame!

People’s Daily Online goes on to note that starting a company in Hungary takes more than twice as long as the OECD average – 16.2 days, as compared to 38 days in Magyarorszag.

via People’s Daily Online — Hungary’s business environment less friendly: World Bank.

The call hopes to attract visionary ideas to better communicate between the Vienna city government and its citizens as well as to solve future administrative challenges in a modern and economic way.

You can find additional information about this call at http://www.zit.co.at/foerderungen/aktuelle-calls/open-source-fuer-wien.html (Only in German).

How are your local and national governments thinking? Is this a general trend for public administrations? Is the city of Vienna in this respect a front-runner or follower?

The European Commission is now in the process of preparing the next ICT research Work Programme for years 2011-2013. In view of this, the Software & Service Architectures and Infrastructures unit is updating the research community’s vision for the area, identifying key technological challenges and research priorities, and establishing a research agenda for the coming years.

This is achieved through consultation with external experts, with industry and with academia, while additional input comes from a number of initiatives that are developing roadmaps and research agendas for Software and Services, such as ‘Future Internet’ (http://www.future-internet.eu/).

The main objectives of this consultation are to identify the key technical challenges, the success factors, the expected impacts, and to derive a list of research foci and priority actions to be implemented. For this, a wide range of aspects should be addressed including technological issues, research challenges and standardisation approaches. The timeframe to be considered for this Work Programme is 2011 to 2013.

The consultation can be accessed at http://www.eu-ecss.eu/contribution_list_2010.

It will be possible to add contributions starting from 21/09/2009 until 02/11/2009; after this date, the consultation will be closed, and the resulting ideas and suggestions will be used as a valued input for the next research Work Programme.”

I am convinced that our CITT partners and readers should actively contribute!