Specific Objective: To improve entrepreneurship SME support systems.

Thematic Objective/Priority: Enhancing the competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises, the agricultural sector (for the EAFRD) and the fisheries and aquaculture sector (for the EMFF).

Investment Priority: Promoting entrepreneurship, in particular by facilitating the economic exploitation of new ideas and fostering the creation of new firms, including through business incubators.

The proposed grid of actions, to be implemented over a 24month period, includes interventions in the scope of enhancement of the entrepreneurship culture, assisting business creation, building new skills and supporting new and/or existing enterprises. Actions that aim at promoting an ecosystem that nurtures entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs in the CB and so on to the improvement of entrepreneurship SME support systems. More specifically, it will be fostered an environment, supportive of entrepreneurs (incl. startups), by tailoring services to their real needs, promoting positive media coverage and bringing them together. Partners agreed to take an initiative, in order to tackle a common barrier, that is SMEs' limited, if any, access to existing support services. At the same time, they also admit this as a factor influencing or discouraging business creation overall.

In order to improve the entrepreneurship SME support systems a set of activities is foreseen, that addresses two main types of factors, those determining the decision making for new businesses and those determining the success and viability of enterprises. In the first case, the activities are relevant to enhancement of knowhow, the procedure of generating a business idea, the ability to access financing tools, the networking opportunities especially the accessibility to supporting services and finally the development of skills related to issues such as risk management etc., in the second case, activities are oriented to entrepreneurial aspects such as skilled resources, quality and innovation tools and techniques' introduction into current procedures, marketing and promotion place in the business' strategy etc. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that the mix of services to be provided, via the entire grid of activities foreseen, is designed to be flexible and adaptable to what is needed at the time as well as to who is in need of the specific services package (profiling).