Evaluating European Union support for innovation in Spanish small and medium enterprises

Abstract

Finding funding is one of the main problems small and medium enterprises (SMEs) face, which is why the European Union has set up programmes to support SME development. This paper has two objectives: firstly, to describe the different European funding programmes available to Spanish firms; secondly, to present an empirical study on the use Spanish SMEs (and especially, SMEs in the service sector) make of these programmes in order to innovate, together with an analysis of the importance these funding programmes have on SME innovation.

Keywords:

• European Union support
• innovation
• SME
• service industry